The Objective
AIB Future Sparks
AIB is one of Ireland’s leading banks, and since 2018, its AIB Future Sparks Festival has helped second level students all over the country unlock the power of their potential. Spanning the technology, creativity, and lifestyle sectors, the festival brings together young entrepreneurs and leaders in business to inspire students and prepare them for the world of work.
As they ramped up for their third event, originally scheduled to take place in March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic gripped the world and put a stop to AIB’s plans. Thankfully, much of the programme could be moved online – and the festival quickly adapted and transformed into a new online series.
To help ensure no student missed out, AIB turned to TikTok to promote their new AIB Future Sparks series and drive thousands of students and teachers towards their unique online educational series.
AIB online account opening
On top of this, the bank wanted to ensure customers could open a new personal current account easily, securely and quickly, using the AIB mobile app on their smartphone. As part of a second campaign, it aimed to reach new students en masse and drive awareness of this initiative.
The Solution
AIB worked with one of Ireland's leading marketing communications companies, Core , to design two separate campaigns aimed at achieving both of the brand’s marketing objectives.
AIB Future Sparks
For AIB and its re-imagined festival series, a collection of One Day Max In-Feed Ads were chosen to gain maximum reach with students in Ireland. They were served across three weeks, all directing users to a live, long-form video on YouTube which presented the festival series.
Sound-on and full screen, One Day Max In-Feed Ads appear natively at the top of a user’s personalised "For You" feed alongside other user-generated content, and feature 100% SOV for your brand name and a short description or call to action. They dominate the screen when and where it matters most, in the palm of the hand, right at the start of a user’s journey.
AIB online account opening
As part of the second campaign, to promote its fast and easy mobile current account application service, AIB also launched two TopView ads to draw interest from its target market. Students and young people are a challenging audience to engage with for the banking and finance sector, but following the strong performance of the In-Feed Ad series for its festival series, AIB knew TikTok would be the perfect platform to achieve its goal.
Taking the form of full screen, sound-on, 30s videos presented to all users on opening the app, the ads depicted a young woman facing a very relatable banking dilemma: the urgent need for a bank account when starting a new job, and how easy the process of opening one can be with AIB.
A “Learn More” CTA featured at the bottom of the ads, which then directed users to AIB’s landing page where instructions on how to open an account on their smartphone were provided.
The Results
AIB Future Sparks
The One Day Max In-Feed Ad campaign was a huge success for AIB and its virtual festival. Showing across three days, the ads yielded an incredible 2.13 million impressions – more than 87% higher than the target. Almost 2 million video views were recorded, as well as 40,000 clicks and 94,000 engagements.
AIB online account opening
The second campaign's TopView resulted in even more impressive results. Shown on May 18 and June 1, the ads generated 3.3 million video views and 3.5 million impressions, driving 647,000 clicks with a CTR of 18.62%. And in terms of engagement, the total settled at 688,000, with a highly enviable engagement rate of almost 20%.
