#MarketingExcellenceAwards MY 2020 highlight: RHB's marketing blitz for mobile app wins hearts

Bagging the gold award for the category “Excellence in media strategy” at A+M’s Marketing Excellence Awards 2020 was RHB Bank with its campaign to promote its mobile banking app.

RHB is not a stranger in using emotional films to connect with its consumers. Last Deepavali, it unveiled a film titled "Light in a Time of Darkness", which tells the tale of renowned magician Vikneswaran Allagu also known as Vikey, whose real-life story of resilience serves as inspiration for a nation trying to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. For Malaysia Day, the bank also launched a national day film which aimed to restore hope and optimism for the nation.

However, for this campaign, RHB took things further a notch to be noticed by the younger generations. Besides an emotional film, the bank rolled out a 360 integrated media execution that looked to drive massive awareness of its refreshed mobile banking app to every audience segment in Malaysia. RHB worked together with digital marketing agency Consider iProspect for this marketing blitz.

Challenge

RHB Bank wants to attract more users to use its mobile banking service because users of mobile banking are likely to be stickier in their relationship with the bank, thus delivering better revenue. This also comes as the bank observed that more Malaysians are switching to mobile banking as their go-to channel for banking activity, and the trend is prevalent especially amongst the Millennials and Gen Z consumers.

However, RHB is facing an immense challenge to convince people to adopt its mobile banking services. This is because it is not seen as the top-of-mind brand for Malaysians to consider, as the industry is dominated by the top two local banks. RHB’s mobile banking application is also seen as more inferior to these key players as its user journey and interface is not as user-friendly. Therefore RHB needed to elevate itself and raise its profile to compete against its more established competitors.

Targeting Millennials and Gen Z consumers aged 18 to 40, RHB looked to challenge the status quo of mobile banking and introduce industry-first technological features that addresses users’ pain points.

RHB wanted to differentiate itself from the main players in the banking industry by growing the number of mobile banking users, improving customers’ net promoter scores, as well as strengthen its brand awareness.

Strategy

RHB re-launched its mobile banking app that introduces a new user journey, interface and experience. It also introduced a few features that its key competitors do not have, which allows consumers to have better ease of use that is practical as well.

As its competitors showcased technical features and functions in its communications, RHB decided to take the unconventional approach through an emotionally-led campaign. The campaign aims to showcase the features and functions and subtly show how the RHB Mobile Banking app helps consumers build relationships by freeing up their time from conventional banking. This reinforces RHB mobile banking’s proposition of “banking right by you” which comprises a dual meaning of being with the consumer every step of the way and also banking done right.

The emotional hero video leverages story-telling of young people in love doing meaningful things for each other, and how the RHB brand is shown as helping the female lead to manage payments on a gift for her boyfriend. This illustrates RHB’s understanding of youth culture, and the role that it can play in that ecosystem. A catchy song was also featured in the video to enhance recall.

Additionally, RHB created a series of testimonial-based videos for its more mature audience to showcase the app capabilities and its application in a user’s daily life. The series features influencer talents Daphne Iking and Cheryl Lee.

Execution

RHB also launched a 360 integrated media coverage with the aim to drive massive awareness and ad recall for its mobile banking app and to catch Malaysians at every step of their journey online and offline. The bank placed its mobile banking app video on YouTube, the top social media and video platform in Malaysia. It also made it available on Facebook to ensure that it would get the most reach and brand recalls by combining visibility on both platforms.

RHB then further utilised multiple offline mediums to amass an integrated media approach for this campaign to effectively reach out to its target audience. This includes:

• Digital out-of-home ads to reach commuters who are stuck in traffic

• MRT interior takeover to remind commuters of the convenience of mobile banking

• Office lift wraps targeted at working adults

• Wrapping its external ATMs at shopping complexes and public places

• Electronic direct mailers to inform existing consumers of the new app
• Paid TV commercials to target urban audience

Furthermore, RHB wrapped the teller counters in its physical branches with a life-sized mobile phone, inviting customers to take their banking on mobile while highlighting the benefits of mobile banking to customers who are waiting to be served.

Results

The campaign saw a resounding success. In total, RHB’s video assets garnered more than 5.1 million video views during the campaign period. Its mobile banking users has also grown by 40.2% within a year. Additionally, number of transactions on mobile banking app grew by 72% year on year. RHB’s customers satisfaction score also improved, with the rating from 77% in 2018 to 80% in 2019. Its net promoter scores improved drastically as well, from 8% in 2018 to 15% in 2019.

The campaign also helped the bank improved top of mind awareness, brand trust and brand reliability, which indicate that Malaysians are resonating well with the brand.