Australian Ethical is an award-winning ethical investment fund harnessing the power of financial markets to bring about social change. Today, they’re leaders in ethical investing and champion a virtuous combination of profit and purpose to deliver significant financial returns while changing the world for the better. With signups declining across the category and a recessionary market, especially in superannuation, we needed to create a campaign that would remind our audience Australian Ethical is the original ethical investor and ensure it stands out from a sea of new ethical competitors.
Advertising in the investments category often subscribes to ‘emotive’ or ‘worthy’ storytelling. Some in the ethical investing space even resort to ‘fear-mongering’ angles to convince everyday Aussies to shift their money. We needed a different way to cut-through our competitors’ messages. We knew money has always been considered the root of all evil, but we believed that money can be a force for good too. We knew that people really did love money deep down, despite the perceived crudeness of the topic. So we created an edgy and attitude-packed campaign to educate Australians that it's OK to love money, when it's invested ethically.
A campaign of this kind is a first for the investments category, boldly flipping perceived crudeness of loving money to deliver positive financial and environmental returns – a huge tactical pivot for Australian Ethical, who had relied on a wholesome and worthy approach in earlier campaigns. The striking and unexpected characters, combined with the accompanying art direction and production design that feels closer to high fashion than finance), made the campaign utterly distinctive in the category – resulting in a 15% YoY membership growth and their highest ad recall ever. The audacious ‘I Love Money’ headline combined with the grounding ‘Invest with Heart’ brand platform worked together to reaffirm Australian Ethical as both Australia’s original ethical investor and its category leader.
