Ads & Ends — Nanette Franco-Diyco
This bank’s digital material is able to so effectively communicate with its target market without resorting to the conventional method of using bank lingo. And this was exactly what the BPI creative brief demanded: “to tug at heartstrings to communicate to the target market.” The target market here is mothers in the lower socio-economic bracket
The product is BPI Pamana Savings. The rational benefit is that it’s a savings account with insurance worth three times your balance. Advertising agency Mullenlowe created a 4-minuter that is decidedly emotional from start to finish. Let’s face it, we have many commercials that use sentimentality to the extreme, with nowhere to go but to somehow achieve whatever form of brand recall can be achieved.
This BPI material is different, indeed rising above the clutter. It is able to deliver with oomph an all-important message. You follow the story with growing interest, and at the end, your target market can have painlessly imbibed the precious lesson of patiently saving little by little. I remember with it a favorite French proverb: “Little by little, the bird builds its nest.”
Leah Reyes, president and CEO of Mullenlowe, shared with me her undisguised joy over her agency’s work now scoring nearly 1.5 million views.
Director Pepe Diokno treated the story with a great deal of compassion and tenderness. He cleverly uses a red lunch box as his memorability peg. It’s a good, simple story with good actors, dramatized with heart.
A young mother lovingly prepares for every school day her little girl’s baon (packed meal) in this red lunchbox. We see in good pacing the little girl growing to a high school dalagita (young lady) and on to her college days with her barkadas (cliques).
She understandably balks over the baon ritual. Once, the mother even personally delivers the red lunchbox to school!
Ever so gently and softly, she explains that she can save a little of her money with the baon she prepares for her. A little note of “I love you” erases heartaches — and the daughter counters via the same lunchbox with an identical message. This same lunchbox delivers to her mom varied tokens of school triumphs — up to her highest accomplishment of passing the board.
The Pamana angle comes at the very end as a lasting reward — laid out with gentle grief couched with a bit of humor that spelled an honest-to-goodness tug at the heart.
The client lauded Mullenlowe’s big idea. “The analogy of baon was also perfect for the product as a savings account, to communicate that little things done regularly matter significantly.”
The soft-sell end tag summarizes the priceless takeaway lesson: “Because the best pabaon is a secure future for your family.”
Take a bow, Mullenlowe and BPI. This truly demands an encore.
Credits. Client-company, BPI : Chinky Lukban, Carmina Marquez, Ailee Canlas, KC Santos, Tricia Quiambao, and Dana Solidum.
Ad agency, Mullenlowe Philippines: Rene Dominguez, creative director; Hannah Portugal, copywriter; Abi Montana Santillan, art director; Viboy Pallilo, strategic planner; Nina Cruz Zialcita, business unit director; Mel Tomas Jimenez, account director; and Nelson Naungayan, producer.
Production house, Straight Shooters: Pepe Diokno, director; and Ruth Colacion, executive producer.
Nanette Franco-Diyco ended her 15th year advertising career as Vice-President of JWT, segueing into the world of academe, currently teaching communications at the Ateneo de Manila University.
nanettediyco131@gmail.com
