In a sea of financial advice across social media, finding a trustworthy source can be tough. That's where Chase, the largest bank in the U.S.[1], steps in. With our expanse of insights and expertise, we saw a real opportunity to help everyday Americans access credible financial education in a way that's both informative and engaging.
We tapped into our data and consumer research to identify the personal finance topics our customers care about most and rolled out an “always-on” campaign on Facebook and Instagram. With new content delivered every 6 weeks, we kept things fresh and learned along the way – testing different creative treatments, media formats and topics – to identify the best ways to talk money. To this end, we assessed not only performance analytics, but also Meta’s new Continuous Lift Study to keep tabs on our progress.
Going into it, the questions we wanted to answer were simple:
The good news? Not only did we hear a resounding “yes” to all our questions, but the campaign was a major success, driving meaningful lift and favorability for the Chase brand.
[1] By assets
Starting with the insight that strategic audience segments look to social media and “finfluencers” for financial education, we worked with our Insights and Paid Media teams to identify the topics and channels on which to build our campaign. We structured our editorial around four strategic financial health themes: Spend, Save, Plan and Borrow.
Plan of action: We deployed our content these themes in a dynamic, multi-wave approach, which allowed us to learn as we went and adjust our creative for subsequent waves. We focused on video content – a key feature of our execution – where we found shorter videos (15 seconds or less) saw higher engagement. With this in mind, we optimized content length and strategically placed critical information within the first three seconds to capture viewer attention.
The challenges: We noticed in the initial wave of creative that static imagery was underperforming and there was a noticeable drop in VCR for video content that exceeded 20 seconds. We quickly pivoted – removing static from subsequent batches and tested breaking longer videos into shorter segments, while also making sure critical elements were shown within the first three seconds of the video. A video in our second batch focused on savings tips had the highest VCR ~25% – likely due to the shorter video length (13s). These changes helped improve engagement and kept interest high through the duration of the campaign.
What makes our work unique: As the largest bank[1] in the country with branches in all lower 48, Chase is well-positioned to help many Americans improve their financial know-how, especially at a time when misinformation is rampant. The question was: how?
With a strategic editorial plan, data-driven optimizations and a focus on viewer engagement, our work reflects our commitment to delivering impactful – and educational – financial health content to Chase customers. We gleaned insights from Meta’s brand lift study and studied analyzed content performance every six weeks to better understand the campaign’s impact on brand perception in real time. This helped us fine-tune messaging and content strategy – drilling down on topics and creative formats that were resonating with customers – and further cementing Chase’s position as the preeminent source for financial health insights. We used month-over-month performance metrics to measure the campaign’s success and guide future content rotations. This campaign and the speed at which our in-house team made creative optimizations was a first for the company.
[1] By assets
The financial health campaign garnered 106.5MM impressions. Chase Top-of-Mind awareness increased by 5.6 percentage points, 5X more than industry benchmark – likely a result of diversified creative and consistent weekly frequency at 3.5x.
The Campaign by the Numbers:
Our financial education content was well-received by customers. Those that saw our content ranked Chase as a leading expert for financial tips and insights when compared against competitors. Our brand lift results were 5X above industry benchmark.
Customers that viewed our content were more likely to agree that Chase provides helpful tips to better manage their money – message agreement showed a 5-point lift.
By operationalizing a 6-week creative refresh, we were able to assess performance, take creative learnings, create new assets and distribute them – proving that yes, we can operate nimbly to produce "always-on" content.
What We’ve Learned About Creative:
Following the success of this financial health campaign, we’ve received investment to continue testing. In phase two, we’ll deploy top-performing creative to prospects and expand to YouTube Shorts.
