The central challenge was to communicate the launch of Asda’s new unlimited cashback credit card and its new financial services brand, Asda Money through generating positive media coverage.

The PR channel served to challenge the business on its messaging for launch and stress test these to ensure the story would stand out against competitors and illustrate Asda Money’s commitment to shaking up the market.

While the commercial imperative was to successfully launch the new market-leading cashback credit card from Asda Money, we agreed the real opportunity for the PR launch was to powerfully re-position Asda Money as a genuine alternative to traditional FS providers. This would showcase how the brand is combining its retail expertise with financial services to put customers at the heart of everything.

The only way of positioning Asda as being able to compete with its competitors was to remove the barriers as to why it was different and use this to illustrate that Asda was a true alternative to the traditional model. This was the idea that was to set us apart from our competitors at launch.

It was important that given the scale and scope of the launch it achieved maximum impact through media relations. We developed three core stories for each target audience: the business story to launch the new brand and credit card, a money saving/consumer story to support the credit card plus a B2B story to support the credit card launch.

It was important that given the scale and scope of the launch it achieved maximum impact through media relations.

We developed three core stories for each target audience: the business story to launch the new brand and credit card, a money saving/consumer story to support the credit card plus a B2B story to support the credit card launch.

We needed to ensure we were targeting highly influential journalists and kicked this off through placing an exclusive interview with Marcus Leroux, retail correspondent, The Times to lay the gauntlet down and communicate Asda Money’s ambition to “aggressively expand in the financial services sector.”

In conjunction with this exclusive we placed a series of interviews for Kirsty Ward with senior money saving journalists with the message that Asda Money was the “first gimmick free unlimited cashback supermarket credit card”.

The relevant broadcast, online, regional, consumer and B2B media were also heavily targeted with these core messages.

Generating positive media coverage for the launch of Asda Money and the credit card:

- 161 items of launch coverage

- 98% of coverage was positive; 39% include quotes from Kirsty Ward

- Headlines communicated our core messages: Asda joins race to ‘replace’ battered high street banks (The Times)

Driving applications for the credit card and traffic to the new Asda Money website (for judges eyes only):

- Total visits to the website were up 35% year on year

- Credit card applications were up 276% against target

- 64% increase in account openings in July vs June 2012

Quote from Kirsty Ward, Head of Asda Money: “The PR strategy was integral to the success of the credit card launch and rebrand. We knew that our target journalists would be sceptical about the rebrand, but our PR agency together with the marketing team navigated this perfectly and created a campaign that delivered stand out media coverage that positioned us as a significant player in the financial services sector.”