It’s hard to say exactly who took the bravest gamble in the spring of 1997.

Was it Canadians, for trusting their hard-earned dollars to an intangible, invisible, unheard-of bank? Or was it ING Groep NV, a two-year-old upstart out of Amsterdam, for taking its first-ever flyer on what it hoped to turn into a worldwide rollout of virtual banks?

Today, both bets are paying off big-time. And the innovative brand engineering that turned an audacious concept into a reality that’s still sizzling makes ING Direct Strategy’s Top Client in the financial category.

How effective was the introduction of ING Direct? Enough so that its customer base zoomed from zip to more than 750,000 in just six years. That’s one out of every 40 Canadians and their ranks are still growing by some 20,000 delighted newbies a month.

ING Direct is equally happy with what adds up to a dramatic success story any way you slice it, says Toronto-based Stacey Grant- Thompson, SVP of marketing.

It’s already Canada’s ninth-largest financial institution. Its startup investment of $50 million has produced $10 billion in assets to date. Its first profit was turned two years ahead of projections. And fiscal 2002 racked up a pre-tax profit of $48 million, a 400% increase from 2001.

And then, says Bruce Philp, a partner at ING Direct’s AOR, Toronto’s Garneau Wurstlin Philp Brand Engineering, there’s the ultimate accolade. ‘The beating heart of the brand and all the basic success factors that were established and proven in Canada’ have already been exported to seven of the 64 other countries in which ING Direct’s parent company operates.

So, based on the sunny state of ING Direct’s fortunes today, was it a cinch to pitch to the public from the get-go?

No way, say Philp and his partner, Philippe Garneau. Both agree that ING was then, and still remains, the most exciting assignment of their careers because, says Garneau, ‘it was an opportunity not to make cool ads, but to really prove to the world what brand engineering is. This was a global experiment that could actually change the landscape in its category and make a fundamental difference in the way people regard a very important aspect of their lives.’

Accomplishing a feat of this magnitude was anything but easy. For starters, ING was only Canada’s second virtual bank. That means no bricks, no mortar, no tellers, no ATMs – in short, nothing to see, touch, feel or even depict in imagery.

And even though Canadians are generally among the earliest adopters of technological advances, the first virtual bank here – Bank of Montreal’s mbanx – struck them as so outlandish that it flopped fast and was quietly dumped.

In ING’s infancy, so many squeamish souls kept turning up at its Toronto corporate office – trying to hand their initial deposits to the receptionist – that Grant-Thompson says informal drop-in cafés were hastily set up. These provided a reassuringly real venue for chats with actual human beings about how to bank the newfangled way: by Internet and telephone.

Meanwhile, to further escape intangibility, quirky promotions became an annual tradition. Designed with Toronto’s Inventa Promotions, these efforts are always decked out in ING’s signature orange and have included brand ambassadors riding bicycles and pushing wheel barrows while handing out tulips to underscore both the bank’s Dutch origin and the advisability of growing one’s savings.

But getting back to the pioneering challenge that faced the marketing team, Garneau says the ‘central strategy’ the team chose was to position ING Direct as ‘a consumer advocate and therefore a challenger brand.

‘We were never going to use the projective exercises that people indulge in with financial institution advertising, stuff that says ‘this is what you’ll do with your money,’ and shows a person on a beach or somebody happy to have bought their car,’ Garneau explains. ‘We were always going to be strictly about product.’

Which brings us to the fact that branchless banking was by no means ING Direct’s only glaring difference. Another was the unheard-of manner (for its sector) in which it launched. That is, with a single product.

That turned out to be a boffo move, even though Philp says copious market research initially suggested it was bound to bomb. ‘But there’s a time to use research and there’s a time to use courage.’

Why did it work? Partly because, by ’97, many consumers perceived Canada’s traditional banks as akin to Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life – callous misers at best and brazen gougers at worst. Not only did the biggies demand ever-increasing fees on every transaction, but the interest they paid on savings accounts – at least those belonging to non-millionaires – was averaging a measly .05%.

So, sporting a rate 10 times higher, ING debuted its one and only product: a savings account with no fees, no minimum balances and no haggling or rich-guy privileges.

In hindsight, it seems obvious why customers would come running to such a ‘power-to-the-people’ proposition. But Philp says conveying it was actually a tricky psychological exercise. ‘If I come to you with a product that’s better than the one you’re using, you’re going to resist my argument because accepting it means you have to confess to having been mistaken in the past.’

The solution? Enter ‘the Dutch guy.’ The stern, schoolmasterish theatre actor Frederik DeGroot, who was chosen to be ING Direct’s human embodiment after hundreds of auditions in every major Canadian city plus New York, Los Angeles and Amsterdam.

The approach impressed longtime strategic guru Ron Woodall, EVP of creative strategies at Palmer Jarvis DDB, Vancouver. ‘Using this no-nonsense, curt, almost rude guy, who subtly convinces you that you’re an idiot’ for putting up with the big banks’ modus operandi, ‘was pretty much the direct opposite of the usual financial spots.’

But that’s exactly why the Dutch-guy ads work, explains ING’s Grant-Thompson. ‘Because he’s a foreigner to Canada – and specifically Dutch to reflect our heritage – we can have him express curiosity and ask questions without insulting anyone. ‘Why do you accept low rates on your savings? Why do you pay fees?”

‘Frederik’s not a Hollywood-perfect man,’ Garneau points out. ‘But he’s got a searing gaze and an old-time rhetorical delivery. We deliberately designed the commercials to be a little bit disruptive because that demands that viewers process what they’re seeing.’

Frederik quickly became a popular icon. The next step was proving the product position with the introduction of subsequent products. These include unsecured lines of credit, respectable-return mutual funds, and no-hassle, no-straitjacket mortgages with rates consistently below those of the competition.

Even later on, when Frederik’s role was complemented by a trio of non-Dutch female actors, there was no deviation from the master script. Their role was not to convince consumers that it makes sense to bank the ING way, but merely to explain the benefits of each new product.

‘To this day, everything we do – print, outdoor, Web site, everything – adds something to the original bucket and says, ‘You know what, ING Direct will never be like the regular banks and vice versa.”

How does that strike competitors? Well, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, ING Direct is now basking in compliments from other banks. Many have adapted, to one extent or another, ING’s offerings as well as its messaging. To cite just one example, TD Canada Trust is currently running a print ad showing a customer in boxing gloves approaching a meek-looking banker. Headline: ‘No need to haggle for our best rate mortgages.’

Such tit-for-tat tactics are unlikely to provoke ING Direct to even contemplate changing its game plan, says Philp. ‘Everything you see next week, next month, next year, although we hope it will feel fresh, will still make sense for the brand.’

Adds Garneau, ‘A lot of the architects of this brand were defectors from the big banks. They were rogues and renegades and there were only about a dozen of them in the beginning. But today, even though there are now hundreds there, they’ve never lost that start-up spirit. And I don’t think they ever will.’