Thanks, November ’89 (The Banks of yesterday, today and tomorrow)

Summary

With this project, ČSOB bank brought back the values of November ’89, which are still relevant today. We used the historical uniqueness of the ČSOB bank as it is one of our 2 banks which existed before November and exist to this today. It thus has a unique professional competence to comment on the functioning of banks before 1989, immediately afterwards and nowadays. Cooperation with influencers served to promote and improve the article session duration and to address the younger population. Their original idea was to create short videos with their own parents, who cast their minds back to the pre-November banks, while the topics corresponded with the published articles.

Challenge and goal

The goal of the campaign was to pay tribute to November ’89 and to remind its still relevant values to the contemporaries and the bank has also been financially supporting the civic association of former student activists from 1989 for the second year in a row. The requirement was to address the contemporary witnesses of the events of that time, as well as the generation that was not yet born in 1989. The target group was the entire adult population over the age of 15. The challenge was to connect ČSOB with the anniversary of November ’89 in a way that no other brand has used so far, although the anniversary of this event have been used by several of them in their campaigns in the past.

Strategy and plan

The strategy was based on a creating a unique native project, mapping the operation of the banking system, but also repressive instruments, such as foreign exchange clauses and other forms of restriction to citizens’ freedom prior to 1989. During the three weeks of November, we published 6 native longform articles in the affinity media. The subpage on the ČSOB website www.csob.sk/november89 became the aggregator. On the day of publishing individual articles, the influencers linked their videos with parents in their IG stories to the respective article. We also wanted to maximize pageviews and session duration using the Strossle platform for distribution.

Execution

Based on precisely defined topics, we created 6 high-quality native longform articles. They contained a number of historical documents, the accuracy of which was guaranteed by the historians PhDr. Londák from SAS and F. Pavčík from NK Praha. Information from banking sector was guaranteed by former NBS Governor I. Šramko and ČSOB pre-revolution employees. Zuzana Mistríková from the civic association November ’89 reviewed the texts on behalf of the student movement. The forecast of the bank of the future was provided by the development center of the KBC global banking group, which ČSOB is a part of. Valuable photos were provided by TASR and the NBS. The media plan included an important opinion-forming medium (sme.sk), an economic medium (hnonline.sk) and a medium for the young generation (refresher.sk). The influencers were Š. Martinovič, actor and entertainer, and traveller M. Navrátil (Travelistan). They prepared 3 videos each,  asking their parents about the operation of banks before November ’89. They published their videos always on the day of releasing the article thematically corresponding to the story on their IG profile. We used the swipe up function, so it was possible to click from the story directly on the published article. We also supported the distribution of articles with the Strossle platform and advertising on social networks.

Results

Our articles achieved a extraordinary organic pageview and session duration scores, up to a total of 25,181. With the support of Strossle, the articles had a total of up to 48,555 reads. With boosts, we have reached the level of 1,414,599 impressions. We also used the campaign in internal communication where we prepared a knowledge quiz for ČSOB employees on the history of banking. It is exceptional that we did not use any direct mention of current ČSOB products or services in the texts. As a result, however, the public will now perceive ČSOB even more as a traditional and timeless financial institution that has a high level of professionalism and professes democratic values.