Love it or hate it, the ‘It Is Possible’ campaign from Bank of Montreal is getting a lot of attention.

Kathy MacMillan, vice-president corporate marketing for the bank, says that while there have been pro and con comments within the advertising industry about the bank’s in-your-face creative, the campaign has broken through the clutter and struck a chord with the consumer.

MacMillan says phones started ringing almost immediately after the campaign broke May 17 and responses have exceeded expectations, with nearly 50,000 requests to date for the free Book of Possibilities – worksheets and financial planning information – part of the campaign.

The original objective of the campaign was to maintain the bank’s distinctiveness in the category with leading-edge advertising.

Bank of Montreal felt that after the launch of its ‘We’re Paying Attention’ campaign in 1991, other banks began to emulate it, and bank advertising suddenly began to look the same again.

MacMillan says while other financial institutions may try to copy components of the campaign, it is more than an advertising campaign.

‘It is a well-thought-out and well-articulated overall bank strategy,’ she says.

A 60-second tv commercial ran for 10 days before the May 17 launch of the Possibility Network, a free program that matches the financial profiles of people with models of others in the same circumstances to help them reach their financial goals.

On May 17, three 30-second tv spots broke, along with radio and a freestanding newspaper insert that explained the service and offered consumers the Book of Possibilities.

tv and newspaper advertising continues.

The creative features greatly exaggerated characters, which appear to be from another world, in tv spots all in one color, and print ads done in black and white.

The characters, or nay-sayers, express their pessimism about the financial future with lines such as, ‘Take it from me. This is as good as it gets.’ And ‘Hey, I’m an optimist,’ and, ‘Think small. You’ll get there faster.’

Bruce Philp, executive creative director for BoM’s agency, Vickers & Benson Advertising, says the campaign has set a new standard in bank advertising and repositioned the bank as the Bank of Possibilities.

Philp says the theme, ‘It Is Possible,’ has to do with overcoming the prevailing sense of hopelessness consumers had about the future.

Must be restored

Strategically, it was felt if financial products are about optimism and people have none, then it would have to be restored.

‘We realized that we were going to have to do something a whole lot bigger than fresh creative,’ Philp says.

‘We were going to have to acknowledge all of these changes, and present the bank in a way that was different and more relevant to the consumer’s current experience,’ he says.

The French-language campaign from Publicite Martin of Montreal was developed around the same basic strategy with the theme-line, ‘Yes, It Is Possible,’ but with an entirely different executional slant.

Wanted to know more

Jacques Larose, vice-president client services and strategic development at Publicite Martin, says in testing the campaign in Quebec, the agency found that people wanted to know more about the program from the start.

‘Our research clearly demonstrated that we had to be more explicit in French to get people to react to it,’ Larose says.

‘We had to give information, and explain the basics of what the profiles are all about to get them to phone in and give their own profile,’ he says.

Intrusive commercials tend not to be well-accepted in Quebec.

Larose says focus groups did not understand the English-language approach, and did not know whether to take it seriously.

The French-language commercials are more realistic and profile real people in real situations.

The visuals from the tv portion of the campaign are carried through to other media such as magazines and outdoor advertising.

Outdoor advertising is a big part of the Quebec campaign because tv viewing drops off significantly in the province during the summer.

While the French campaign does use the theme-line, ‘Yes, It Is Possible’ to describe the new program, BoM has also maintained its established signature line, which translates to ‘Beyond Money, There Are People.’

Research conducted by Publicite Martin last month found that in Quebec the line has the highest level of awareness of all other financial institutions.

Larose says it is also considered the most intelligent of all the bank slogans in a province in which the Caisse Populaire or credit unions hold close to 50% of the market.