Our teenage years are filled with many firsts: dates, jobs, holidays, financial independence. All exciting but filled with anxiety about getting it right, and surrounded by conflicting advice. Our idea was to put the audience’s needs first and create a supportive content platform dedicated to the role of finance at this life stage. Authenticity is everything, so we’d defy the category by speaking to them in their language and on their terms, while staying true to Nationwide’s positioning of ‘On Your Side’.

We also had to bear in mind that when our audience choose to interact with a brand, they expect – no demand – to be heard, acknowledged and responded to. Whereas their parents would have given their left arm for a glimpse of The Rolling Stones 100 metres away through someone’s armpit, they can see what Harry Styles had for breakfast just by looking at their phone.

To populate the channel, we worked with a host of A-list YouTubers such as Tomska, Emma Blackery, danisnotonfire and KickThePJ, who created videos around the editorial strands of ‘Firsts’ (exclusively re-living their first times in sketches and vlogs) and ‘ATM – All Things Money’ (animated infographics, packed with trivia and #MindBlown money myth busters), totalling ten new commissioned videos.

This really resonated with our target teens, because the YouTuber talents have built successful brands from their own bedrooms, and therefore have perceived financial credibility. It also directly addressed the audience’s financial worries and questions, showcasing Nationwide as a helpful brand that they could trust. Once they engaged with us, we could then start talking about the FlexOne product.

Beyond the channel, we ran an integrated activation plan across paid (YouTube standard ads, in-video mentions), earned (SEO, talent social) and owned media (brand website, social media and e-newsletters).

We achieved all our objectives while being more meaningful to our audience:

Brand awareness:

• Nationwide and FlexOne awareness increased by 14% among 13-17 year-olds.

• Money Stuff generated 1.8m video views (organic), 6.1m minutes watched (20% higher than average), and paid media over-delivered by 109% with an additional 3.6m views.

• We saw an overall uplift of 27% in page views to the FlexOne webpage during the campaign.

Brand sentiment:

• 99.7% of all engagement was positive with 93,000 likes (vs. 260 dislikes), 3,900 comments and 920 shares, worth an estimated £10k in earned media value.

• Brand tracking showed image uplifts with the target audience ‘as the most popular finance brand’ (+46%), ‘trust’ (+25%), ‘is a fun brand’ (+30%).

Best of all, Money Stuff amassed a 20,000-strong following of YouTube subscribers in just two months – five times that of retail bank rivals.

(Sources: YouTube Analytics, Millward Brown bespoke study).