Commerzbank AG is the second largest high-street bank in Germany. It looks after close to eleven million retail customers and one million business and corporate customers around the world. The aim of its long-term corporate strategy entitled ‘Roadmap 2012’ is to sustainably and lastingly strengthen its retail and corporate customer business in Germany. The aim is for Commerzbank to become THE principal bank for retail and corporate customers in Germany. In the future, the focus will once again be on being a customer-based bank with profitable core lines of business.The bank’s restructuring was to be brought to life by means of a brand relaunch. Commerzbank publicly questioned its own understanding of banking by means of the ‘First step’ integrated cross-media brand campaign. It intentionally broke with convention and with banking industry practices, and in so doing triggered discussions and media reports – within the banking community, but above all in the media and among bank customers.

A big message requires space. The media strategy for both of the campaign stages – 1.0 and 2.0 – therefore systematically focused on the 60-second brand commercial. A cherry-picking strategy was adopted to select TV areas that would emotionalise the campaign message and quickly raise awareness of it. Within a short space of time, the TV campaign reached 70% of the target group with an average of 3.5 contacts. The accompanying print campaign focused on opinion-forming media such as national daily papers and news magazines. Business travellers and frequent flyers at Germany’s key airport in Frankfurt were addressed by means of billboards. Additional supporting radio commercials featured in the second stage of the campaign, to promote the bank’s new products. Another important step was taken to communicate the bank’s new focus when the Commerzbank blog and its social media channels went live at the beginning of October 2013.

1. Awareness:

Aided campaign awareness hit a peak of 28% in January. This means that close to a third of all Germans are familiar with the new campaign.

2. Advertising recall:

Only 7% of Germans were able to recall any Commerzbank advertising unaided before the campaign (October 2012), this value had risen to 17% by January 2014.

3. Trust:

While 24.5% of those asked responded positively to the statement ‘I would consider Commerzbank as my first choice’ before the start of the campaign, this had improved to 33%.

4. Market success:

The average number of new current account customers per week increased by more than 30% to 340,000 in the campaign period in comparison to 2012.

5. Efficiency:

The campaign also scores points in relation to efficiency: the approach is so penetrative that only 380,000 euros had to be spent for every percentage point of average advertising recall (unaided).