Starting today, Campaign is launching “Market Leaders,” a new series of in-depth Q&As with the visionary leaders defining Canada’s marketing landscape.
While news often triggers these conversations, our goal is to venture far beyond the headlines: We want to pull back the curtain and go inside the industry’s top minds to understand their personal philosophies and how their visions shape the massive brands they steer.
Our first interview is with John Rocco, vice-president and chief brand officer at Scotiabank. Rocco, who is also pursuing a PhD in marketing, joined us for a candid, wide-ranging discussion that didn't shy away from the tough questions.
The catalyst for our talk was Scotiabank’s pre-Christmas launch of its latest brand campaign, “What do you make?”The creative is a departure from traditional banking tropes, instead using a blend of heart-warming and humorous "slice-of-life" moments. The message? That "average" lives are actually rich and meaningful. As Scotiabank CMO Laura Curtis Ferrera noted at the time, the work reframes Scotiabank, from a purely rational utility to a deeply emotional partner, reinforcing its purpose to help clients live "a richer life." But what was also of great interest to us is that the bank’s iconic tagline, “You’re richer than you think” turns 20 this year.
What’s inside this two-part feature:
- Part I: We dive into the evolution of the iconic "You’re richer than you think" tagline, the strategic shift behind "What do you make?", and the complexities of measuring brand equity in a volatile market.
- Part II: We zoom out to the "big picture" challenges facing modern CMOs—from agency relationships and securing CEO buy-in, to the polarizing world of awards and the looming impact of AI.
Q: "You’re richer than you think" has been around for nearly 20 years. Do you constantly have to revisit what that line means to your customers today?
A: It's something we look at all the time, and we test it all the time to see how people feel about it. We test it in bad economic times. We test it in good economic times. And what has sort of rang true for us is people really connect to it as… we are a partner in their financial life.
When it started, it was probably more functional: you can find different ways to save some money. You can be more efficient, you can do things better in a more cost-effective manner. And over time, we started to look at it. And when we brought on our new agency [Rethink] a few years ago, we actually talked to them about that as part of their onboarding.
We said, ‘Listen, there are no sacred cows. You can take a look at this… do we do something new?’ And they came back and said, ‘look at the numbers, people associate it with Scotiabank, they have a really good articulation of what it means to them… it resonates in good times, it resonates in bad times.’ They said, 'It's not about changing your tagline. It's maybe changing how you classify it.'
And we had this sort of epiphany, that we treated it as a tagline; it's a very special tagline, but we never created an anthem to it. We never made a platform out of it. When we did "There's More to Life than More," that was really our first thought at telling a story around it, bigger than a tagline. It was the essence of who we are and how we view our relationships with customers. And that was really special. So, the basis of that campaign led us to evolve in this next iteration of it. And we're committed to not changing the platform, and maybe changing the story we tell, and how it relates to that.
Q: And how did that lead you to “What do you Make”?
A: “What do you make,” Is really the next chapter in that story, and it's quite contextual. We looked at what's happening on social media, and [discovered] this trend of people wanting to know what [the other person] makes and what they do. The last campaign was about how the grass is always greener, and keeping up with the Joneses. And this is about that new phenomenon of, hey, what do you make? What do you earn to drive that car, to live in that house? And really repositioning that and looking at the average Canadian and telling a story that was richer than just numbers [about what they make].
Q: You said this works in good times and bad times and that’s very interesting to me. But given the economic anxiety many face at the moment, is there a risk that using such an optimistic tagline might sound dismissive about that anxiety?
A: We've asked that question internally, going back to the financial crisis in 2008. The question gets asked, "Should you not use the tagline? Should you not say that in these times?"
When we do the research with consumers, because… it's about a relationship and a reciprocity that we have with the consumer, I think they're able to view it in a way that is empathetic..
So it's not that we're being dismissive that times are tough. We're saying we are your partner, and in tough times, we can help you achieve this. We can help you whether it is doing really well in boom periods, or whether it is how to manage through difficult periods.
It's a relationship that we have with you, and that's what we're here for. That's why it's not just a tagline. It is the essence of who we are as a brand, that we are empathetic, that we want to listen to you, we want to understand you, and have solutions for you. And those solutions can change based on where you are in your life, based on macro and micro economic conditions. Regardless of what those things are, we are there to help you.
I think with the brand attributes that we have about being approachable, empathetic, non judgmental, we have that ability and permission to talk to our consumers in that way, and they understand that it's not about being dismissive, it's about understanding and empathy.
Q: Laura Curtis Ferrera said the campaign was about emphasizing emotional benefits over rational ones. Isn't that tricky territory for a bank to go into, to say you’re not just about what’s in your bank accounts but about helping you define personal happiness?
A: We offer the same products [as other banks], and it's very difficult to differentiate. And so where can you differentiate? You can differentiate in the relationship that you have with your consumers, and how you deliver those relatively homogenous products and services.
So it's tricky in a sense, but people think about money in both an emotional way and a rational way—nobody thinks about it solely in one way or the other. So we've got you for the rational. We've got your accounts, we've got the safety, we've got the security, we've got the features that you want—as do a lot of other competitors. But what we want to say is, we don't want you to worry about the functional and the rational. We want to know that we have your back, and we want you to be able to have that mind space, to be able to have that emotional awareness of what those things are that are really important to you, right?
Q: In the "What do you make?" campaign, the word "average" appears frequently. What was the thinking behind embracing that concept?
A: When the agency came with this concept, I fell in love with it right away and knew there was something there. I bought one of those little brick things to shut off Instagram, because I'm just inundated with this false sense of what people's happiness is and what success is, and what the average person is doing. And average is not what you're seeing.
What you're seeing is the exceptional, what you're seeing is the aspirational and maybe even the false. So we wanted to bring it back to: what are those things that make us who we are? It's not about the paycheck. It's how many people that you've kissed. It's how many friends you make, how many fights you have, how many jokes you tell: all of those things that make up who you are is so much more important than this persona people want to project.
We really want to show that everybody is individual and special. And it's not about hitting a certain threshold. It's not about having a certain amount of money, or else we're going to treat you differently. It is about how we are all unique in our own special way, and average, like our heroine said in the spot—you know, average is anything but average.
Q: How do you measure the effectiveness of something built on emotional connection? Is there a specific number you look for?
A: We look at a number of things. We look at our MMM [Marketing Mix Modeling] and we want to look at brand equity. Number one, we measure in a couple of ways. We do ad tracking: Is the message that we want out there happening? Are people enjoying it? Are they taking away what we want them to take away? Are they taking away that it's from us? And is that sort of an ongoing thing?
And what we've really found is, I think there's a rush to get new stuff into market all the time. And as marketers, we want to tell new stories. We ran our last campaign for two years, and just near the end, we started to see some peak and wear out. So I think marketers worry too much about wear out and not enough about wearing in. It takes time, right? We get tired of seeing things because we're looking at it all the time, but in all the messages that people are seeing, it takes time for people to really sit and ruminate on it. So that's why we do the ad tracking, to make sure that people are still enjoying it. So that's number one.
Number two is brand equity. What are they thinking about our brand? And we look at it two ways. What do non-clients think about it? Are we creating a bit of a "I want to be a part of that brand, I'm missing out on something?" And number two, we look at existing clients: are they deepening their relationship with us? Are they becoming more of a primary consumer? Is the message resonating with them, validating their choice to trust us with their finances?Then we look at how it is impacting the rest of the business throughout the funnel. So you'll see in the new campaign, and in the last campaign as well, but I think we did it more purposefully this time, is we're doing a number of 15-second ads that are a little bit more functional in nature, but still very much tied to the brand story and telling it in that way. So we're pairing these in our media buys—seeing the brand spot, seeing more product-focused spots, and telling it in that way. So we're also measuring when we run them together, what we are seeing in terms of the receptiveness to new products.
Look for part two on Wednesday where we zoom out, and Rocco talks agency relationships, CEO buy-in, awards and the looming impact of AI.
