Diamond Bank puts its best foot forward in New Mobile App Ad. with CEO as lead Cast
Uzoma Dozie, MD/CEO, Diamond Bank as Lead Cast in Diamond Bank's new Mobile App TVC by X3M Ideas
Built with a vision to be a leading financial institution, with the best people, providing unequalled customer experience and delivering superior shareholder value, Diamond Bank bestrides the banking industry with some measure of sure footedness and consistency over the years. This agrees with the company’s mission that seeks to consistently exceed customer expectation by providing value-adding solutions through professiona”
As a consistent brand, Diamond Bank despite occasional change of leadership, has kept faith with this solemn brand promise especially at the brand’s moment of truth with its customers.
It is therefore no surprise to see the scenario played out by the brand in a recent TV commercial by Lagos Agency, X3M Ideas for the bank’s new mobile App featuring the bank’s new Chief Executive Officer, Uzoma Dozie as lead cast selling a product that in all ramifications is hi-tech and intended for the upscale market segment.
In the commercial which recently broke on selected national TV stations, Uzoma, a young urbane highflying banker further helped to position Diamond Bank as a very young, dynamic cutting edge technology driven bank.
The target audience for the product might have rightly influenced the choice of choice of the CEO for a task that will ordinarily go to an unknown quantity who models for the peanuts without any pedigree or clout. In view of very tight schedules busy bank CEOs run, it infers that the agency must have a done a yeoman’s jot have a done a yeoman’s job convincing the CEO to be on set for shots to sell the product.
This decision makes sense as the target audiences are the C-level class which could easily identify with the CEO and his product. The CEO of every organization is the chief sales officer and the Diamond Bank CEO sells the product with relish.
The 45-second cut down version of the commercial opens on the conference room with the CEO nodding to conclude a meeting while simultaneously rising to his feet and picking his jacket.
He pulls out his iphone from his pocket and delivers his first line stating the obvious, “As the CEO of Diamond Bank, time is precious and ensuring that things get done is important, quickly, easily and efficiently,” to impress on the essence of time for busy executives. He adds that despite this “there are something you do not like or want to delegate”.
Subsequent frame showed him leaving and an assistant comes up to him holding a file with the inscription “Personal Assistant Candidates”, he glances and waves it away. The camera does a quick pan to the elevator revealing to viewers someone holding the file open but similarly shakes his head and made for the stairs probably because he knows he has a way out.
The CEO model continues his lines, “Like booking my wife’s flight tickets or getting those movies tickets for my kids as promised” while he delivers the first he simultaneously taps the app on his phone, navigates with ease to the book flight menu. A few more steps down the stairs, he remembers the promised “children’s movie tickets” and beams with satisfaction as he scrolled to the menu to buy the tickets online by himself. He also progressed to buy tickets for his personal favorite events without a third party intermediary.
With apparent excitement on his face, he delivers the sales pitch and the clincher, “I can do all of this on the new Diamond Mobile App. It goes beyond banking”. With ostensible satisfaction, he works across to his car, hops in and pauses to look into the camera with a “you see what I mean” kind of grin and came on the last line, “So who needs a PA”. The question ties in with the earlier “Personal Assistant candidates” applications file which he ignored. He knows all the way he has the antidote.
The ad frames close with the bank’s logo and in its elegant print sign off- the New Diamond Bank Mobile App – The Sweetest way to bank”.
Who is better to deliver such a sales pitch for a new, urbane and hi-tech product intended for a new generation of leaders and busy executive than the equally young, savvy but an unorthodox banker/ CEO, a new kid on the block so to say. Uzoma proves a strategic fit for the role and a good judgment by its agency, X3M Ideas who puts together the campaign from concept to finish.
Truly, this is not the first time a CEO will be involved as a lead cast in his brand’s advertising. Examples abound, former President Olusegun Obasanjo was once involved in the brand Nigeria campaign on CNN for Nigeria, Orji Kalu also featured for his Slok Airline on CNN. Richard Brandson and Late Steve Jobs are known global entrepreneurs that occasionally feature in commercials for their respective Virgin and Apple brands. Uzoma with his good product in use demonstration falls in the later category of the sharp and quick-witted CEOs. No doubt there will be higher recall and believability among the target audience.
In a Forbes article titled: Should CEOs Be In TV Ads? By Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix, the author says the strategy of “CEO as front man” has been adopted by numerous brands in the past 30 years, it’s never been entirely clear whether this strategy is effective—until now. The biggest concerns according to him are: (1) failure by the CEO to come across as authentic; and (2) the inability of the brand to commit to the campaign for a period of time long enough to bring about success—which, in turn, can bring about a perceived sense of lack of authenticity. Thus, lack of authenticity is a key driver in failed CEO ads.The results of the analysis show that, in general, ads featuring CEOs outperform ads that do not feature CEOs. “Across every metric we measure, ads featuring CEOs had slightly higher average scores vs. other ads in the same category”.
The survey adds that in particular, ads that feature CEOs have considerably higher “Desire,” “Relevance,” and “Information” scores than ads that do not feature CEOs. “These three metrics measure the extent to which viewers want a product (Desire), can relate to the message of the advertisement (Relevance), and feel they learned something new from the ad (Information). All three are critical components of the Ace Metrix Persuasion score”.
The above study gives credence to the agency’s decision to adopt the CEO who indeed gave a good account of himself the No. 1 brand ambassador and chief marker of the Diamond bank brand. Who else’s best to sell this brand?
