ORLANDO, Florida – Offering to help people reduce stress “by doing some simple steps” sounds more like a pitch for yoga than financial services. “But in our sector, we know that stress around finances is a huge problem,” SunTrust SVP of Consumer Marketing Beth Ventura says.
The purpose-driven theme that SunTrust dramatizes in its advertising is that everyone should be “able to be there in the moments that matter in life and to be financially confident so you can enjoy those moments that matter,” Ventura explains in a interview with Beet.TV while attending the Masters of Marketing conference of the Association of National Advertisers.
“So in a lot of our creative, you’ll see examples of really strong imagery that in a split second you know that’s an important moment in someone’s life,” says Ventura. That imagery was encapsulated in a commercial for SunTrust’s onUp Movement during Super Bowl 2016, as captured in this behind-the-scenes video.
By joining the onUp Movement, consumers are motivated to “Move from financial stress to confidence.” But first, SunTrust must get their attention.
“Consumers are always in charge, of course, and now there are so many things for them to focus on,” Ventura observes. “From a brand perspective, it’s hard to break through.”
In the pre-digital era, marketers looked at their media exposure in distinct buckets, but that no longer works.
“We used to think about everything separately, and now we have to think about everything the way the consumer receives it, which is all stacked,” says Ventura. “And so you can’t just say it was one media mix element or another. It’s about the combination of all of them that makes an impression, that’s compelling and ultimately gets the consumer to act.”
SunTrust is taking the approach that “it’s just not acceptable” for some 80% of people to report that their finances keep them up at night, according to Ventura. “What we’re trying to do is raise awareness of the fact that you can actually reduce your stress by doing some simple steps, like getting budgeting and setting up online alerts,” she says.
We interviewed her at the ANA Masters of Marketing annual meeting in Orlando. This video is part of a series produced at the conference. Beet’s coverage is sponsored by Cadent. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
