Company: Bank of America and MWW Group
Campaign: "Consumers Keep the Change"
Bank of America wanted to teach consumers--who still tend to spend more than they earn and have little in savings--that they can save a penny with every dollar they spend. When
a customer make a charge on a Bank of America debit card, the bank rounds the total price up to the nearest dollar and places the extra change into a Bank of America savings
account. The catch with the program, however, was that the bank's concurrent merger with Fleet was drowning out the message about "Keep the Change."
Research showed that one of the visual elements that consumers associate most with finding "loose change" was a couch with coins scattered in the cushions. This led MWW Group
and Bank of America to host an event during which consumers would search for "lost change" in a 20-foot-long, 750-pound red sofa in exchange for various prizes. On October 20,
2005, MWW Group transformed New York's Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall into an oversized living room and tied the sofa search for loose change to a book signing by
financial expert David Bach, who hosted the event while signing copies of his book, The Automatic Millionaire. Bach also spoke about the benefits of saving even small amounts. The
three-hour publicity stunt attracted more than 1,000 sofa-searching consumers, many of whom signed up for the product while they waited for their chance to attack the couch
cushions.
In addition, MWW launched a multi-tiered media relations campaign. The overall campaign resulted in rave reviews from consumers and the media, which were sustained through more
than 550 print, broadcast and online placements. Publicity efforts generated more than 150 million media impressions with $2.5 million in advertising value. Since the initial wave
of publicity and launch event, more than 700,000 consumers have signed up for Keep the Change and coverage has appeared in media outlets including the Associated Press, Dow Jones,
Boston Globe, Forbes.com, BusinessWeek.com, Fox News, CBS "Early Show," Reuters, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.
Honorable Mentions
FMA Live! Honeywell and NASA To raise interest in math and science among middle school children, Honeywell recruited a group of professional actors and stage show specialists
to choreograph a program to make Sir Isaac Newton's Three Laws of motion more fun for kids (the program was named after Newton's second law: Force = Mass X Acceleration). The
program reached almost 73,000 students in 153 schools and generated more than 25 million media impressions.
Project FOX: Volkswagen AG & eventlabs GmbH Volkswagen joined eventlabs GmbH to showcase the new VW FOX. The event comprised three mini-events over two days in Copenhagen
for journalists in the car's young target demographic group. The group rested at Hotel Fox, observed activities at Studio Fox, and partied at Club Fox - all designed to expose
them to the new car.
Wrigley Benefits of Chewing: Edelman, Wrigley Jr. Company Edelman helped Wrigley teach nearly a million college students the benefits of gum chewing in its campaign last year.
The project, which involved gum samples, local-market events, and educational information, was so successful that Wrigley enlisted Edelman to continue the program at 12 college
campuses.