Money matters to the heart: A case study on how to tie customer care with brand engagement

As consumers’ financial health wavers in the face of macroeconomic challenges, FIs are looking for ways to enable customers to build better financial futures. 

It’s a task that neobanks and fintechs have been better at than traditional FIs. A brief that requires out of the box thinking and bold campaigns fits challengers like Chime and now, Ally Bank, perfectly. 

Recently, Ally launched its Money Roots campaign, which focuses on assisting consumers unpack their feelings and narratives about money by engaging in virtual workshops with experts on topics like people’s values related to money, personal narratives, and how to navigate finances as a couple. 

How to build a campaign that rises above the noise

It’s a campaign that focuses on the emotions behind a financial decision rather than just providing tools. Money Roots works as a case study in how engagement can be married to customer care, and a rare example of what happens when the worlds of psychology and financial services come together.

“Up until now, banks have been focused on the how – teaching hard skills and providing tools that help people manage their finances. Yet, even with skills and tools, Americans are racking up record-breaking debt and feeling financial stress and anxiety like never before,” said Jack Howard, Head of Money Wellness at Ally.

It seems that every time a brand wants to show it cares about its consumers’ wellbeing, it launches a PFM, but Ally is trying to do something different. The firm’s workshops enable customers to explore their beliefs about money, understand what their personal narratives surrounding finances are, and provide guidance around building financial health roadmaps. The firm has also kept the reach of this program as wide as possible: Money Roots is free and requires no purchases to participate.

Money Roots online workshops and their curriculum was created after the firm worked closely with financial therapy and money psychology experts, according to Howard.

“I’ve been piloting the Money Roots workshops for several months and have spent the last 14 years helping people better understand money through financial education initiatives during my time at Ally. We came to realize people not only need to understand the skills of money – how to save, spend and invest – but to create real change, people need to understand their mindset around money,” said Howard.

With the core idea in hand, campaign builders have to transform into storytellers – a job that requires going beyond numbers and pulling at the threads that connect communities and people.

This is how Ally went from an idea to a campaign that stands out:

Find a name: Humans use a lot of nature-related metaphors, and some brands have really leveraged these well. Take Acorns, for example. The firm’s name references the metaphor “mighty oaks from little acorns grow” and is a representation of their approach to investing: slow and methodical. Acorns built on these metaphors while launching the Mighty Oak card with a campaign that featured Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. 

Similarly, Ally’s team also incorporated nature-related references to enrich their campaign. “The spending, saving and investing decisions that people make are influenced by their earliest experiences with money. Money Roots was born from the idea to help people get to the ‘root’ of their money relationship and understand the why behind their money behaviors,” said Howard. 

The campaign’s name is also reminiscent of the metaphor “don’t forget your roots”, a phrase that ties roots and identity together. 

“A person’s beliefs, emotions, and lived experiences are their ‘money roots,’ or financial foundation. Money Roots challenges the old saying that ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’ because when money roots are nurtured, and people develop a positive relationship with money, Ally believes money can ‘grow on trees,’ said Jackie Hartzell, Head of External Communications at Ally.

Find a way to stand out: Big marketing initiatives can get lost if they don’t have more than one leg to stand upon. For example, both Mastercard and American Express built sonic logos that could be played at checkout in brick and mortar stores. But Mastercard went further and launched a whole album that featured different renditions of the sonic logo.

This proved useful, when on the ground realities differed from the marketing plans. Retailers aren’t interested in doing anything that can delay the checkout process or cause distraction, and hence are quite reluctant to play the sonic logos inside their stores. Mastercard’s strategy simply had more ways to get in front of the consumer than Amex’s, and it’s one of the reasons why the company has one of the best sonic brands out there. 

Ally did something similar. Along with making the reach of the campaign as wide as possible, the firm also planted a fourteen-foot-tall Ally Money Tree at The Oculus at the World Trade Center in New York City.  

It’s a big and physical reminder of a brand that’s digital. It evokes feelings of aspiration, it evokes nature, and it evokes majesty.  

The Money Roots campaign also features a sweepstakes program, which will give a total of $100,000 in cash prizes to those who share their money-related stories with the bank. 

The prize values are structured to respond to customers’ biggest financial concerns like the cost of a therapy session, the average monthly credit card and mortgage payment, or the average annual cost of childcare. 

What stands out in this campaign is how each aspect of it beckons customers to interface with the bank and the idea behind Money Roots – it’s a lot less passive than strategies like Mastercard’s album for example. Ally is incentivizing interaction with the firm without requiring any transactions. The campaign is aiming to emulate the firm’s own name. 

“I think the biggest challenge people face is knowing where to find these services and accessibility. That’s why Ally chose to make Money Roots free, giving people of all walks of life, across all income spectrums, an opportunity to improve their financial health and wellness no matter how much money they do or don’t have” said Howard. 

Tie in partnerships: The firm also followed up the Money Roots campaign with a partnership with Calm, a mental health focused app. Through the partnership , the firm has announced the launch of a financial wellness playlist that curates meditations around money and daily mindfulness practices. It also offers one million free subscriptions to the platform. 

“We’re looking to connect with consumers in more forums and disruptive ways,” said Hartzell. 

Sidebar: Building for the heart

For Ally, emotions and psychology were the focal point of the campaign, and this focus gave the campaign its identity as well as its mechanics. 

As financial services gets more crowded, rising above the din is getting harder but some recent campaigns show that its possible. Especially if you lean into psychology and emotions. 

The first example of this comes from Chime, which recently launched a budgeting coloring book to  help customers build financially healthy habits in a stress free way. 

“A coloring budget seemed to fit that bill perfectly as adult coloring books have become popular over the last few years as a way to tap into childlike learning and joy, but also as a way to relieve stress. We thought coloring books would couple perfectly with a task like budgeting – because budgeting doesn’t have to be stressful or intimidating,” said Jennifer Dohm, Head of Consumer Communications at Chime.

Another company working on making budgeting less stressful is Brightfin, which is moving away from complex spreadsheet-like  UX and is focusing on bringing a more gamified interface to the market. The firm has focused on building a UI that isn’t overwhelming and instead borrows from design principles of apps like TikTok to make budgeting less daunting for customers. 

“The people who were using Mint and who are really bummed to see it go away, these are the people who already love spreadsheets. If you look at the Venn diagram of people who love spreadsheets, that is a minority of the population, and everybody has to deal with money,” said Christine Devane, CEO, Brightfin. 

Another example comes from HSBC. When launching its sonic brand, HSBC also launched a campaign called the “Sounds of Home”, an album comprised of sounds from different cities all over the world. Sounds of Home was a response to the firm’s research which found that most overseas students missed how their home cities used to sound. Its how the firm showed that it was attuned to how its customers felt and that it aims to be responsive and play a facilitative role in their lives.