CASE STUDY
Snapshots
of the future
From everyday moments
to future outcomes
Objective
The primary objective of this campaign was to drive consideration, uptake, and top-ups of Stocks and Shares (S&S) ISAs among NatWest’s retail and premier customers before the tax year ends on April 5th.
The campaign focused on the proposition: "Activate your money for your future with the help of NatWest," highlighting the accessibility of starting with just £50 and the expertise of Coutts investment specialists.
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Creative x2
Copywriter
Producer
Role:
Creative
Client: NatWest Business Banking
Sector: Investment/Wealth
Deliverables:
Paid media Consideration
(YouTube,Meta, Instagram)
15 second short-form reasons to believe messaging.Paid Media: Conversion
(YouTube,Meta, Instagram)
15 second short-form reasons to believe messaging.Prize Draw and ISA countdown messaging
The Challenge
Confidence Gap: Research indicated that 6 in 10 potential investors feel unconfident about "taking the plunge," viewing investing as less "safe" than traditional cash ISAs
The Time Bottleneck: Critical concept sign-off was delayed, leaving us to decide how we were to mitigate the loss of momentum.
The "Finfluencer" Environment: Distinguishing NatWest as a transparent, trusted bank in a social media landscape crowded with unregulated financial influencers.
Targeting Constraints: Developing a "retail with an affluent lens" campaign that appeals to both standard retail and Premier customers without alienating either group.
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From a creative perspective, the two biggest challenges fell into these areas:
Budget Constraints & The Hard Pivot: After getting sign-off from the client on one of the early ‘lifestyle’. based creative routes, we had to perform a hard pivot due to two primary factors:
Time: due to unforeseen delays in the process, shooting scenes on location were no longer an option, as resource would not be available on days we would have needed to film.
Stock: We had to pivot and go with Getty stock assets to tell the same story the clients had invested in (with AI renderings) - this was far from the optimal approach to adopt, due to how long finding the right stock could take, in light of the fact that we had to produce 4 executions. We took the decision that wasn’t a viable option, so had to perform a creative pivot to achieve the same sentiment using a different method.
The tone of voice conundrum was a key challenge, as there was no prior campaign reference to guide us. The work needed to resonate with two distinct audiences simultaneously.
Sourcing Premier images was difficult to start with, but avoiding the temptation to skew into ‘too affluent’ territory was never too far away, the tone also needed to remain clearly differentiated from the upper end of the core retail audience. The solution was to strike a precise balance—accessible and aspirational for retail savers, while retaining the authority and Coutts-level expertise expected by high-net-worth clients.
Conceptualisation:
Storyboard to Actualisation
We utilised a combination AI generated images and Getty stock video to create a variety of P.O.V and general lifestyle and scenerio based around the theme of ‘snapshots of the future’ to gauge the T.O.V temperature with the clients. This evolved into a collection ‘Lots of Littles’ a series of tryptic structured vignettes to carry the messaging.
Visual Strategy
The campaign could not target Retail and Premier customers separately in paid media, so the creative intent was to develop a "Retail with an affluent lens" approach. The goal was to ensure the tone was sophisticated enough for Premier customers while remaining accessible and inclusive for the general retail audience.
Production Challenges
As a number of creative avenues were decided by default (time, budget, availability of resource), the only obstacle really was the time it took to source video that:
met the clients requirement of sitting comfortably between two distinct customer groups
Combined successfully to carry the messaging
Not intending to underplay the fact that this ended up being a race to get a lot of assets ready for the hard deadline in time for the new ISA financial year.
Outcomes
‘Snapshots of the future…’
"Lots of Littles" strategy, crystalised into these 3 primary routes and the ‘Prize Draw’ suite of assets
Project Learnings
AI is a brilliant tool to quicky compose, interogate and iterate at pace if, the project scope is nicely in place and if all things are going according to plan, but if they are not, one has to be very mindfull of which methods to stick with or shelve (such as a the image/footage searches)
Tight integration and keeping lines of communication with my fellow creative/copywriter was key, especially with such a fast moving project.
Having gone through so many avenues in the discovery phases of the project - don’t be afraid to ‘ask the question’ or step into grey areas of the brand, if one is convinced that the idea, concept or ‘story’ feel powerful enough to put forwards.