2021 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Challenge & Objective

HomeEquity Bank (HEB) provides reverse mortgages to Canadians over 55. It is a very specific audience where the bullseye customer is 72 years old. The brand purpose is to provide people with the freedom to live retirement their own way by retiring in the homes they love.
The principal challenge was to continue to increase awareness and affinity for the brand during the COVID-19 crisis, and to improve consideration scores, which can be directly attributed to qualified leads and ultimately sales of HEB’s core product, the CHIP reverse mortgage.
In order to achieve that, the brand created a content series aimed at educating and protecting Canadian seniors from the increase in fraudulent schemes resulting from the pandemic.

Insight & Strategy

During the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of cases of financial fraud aimed at Canadian seniors increased significantly. As we were all forced to spend more time indoors because of the nationwide lockdown, criminals targeted seniors through telephone and online scams that were costing millions.
As a brand that works exclusively with seniors, HEB wanted to do something about it.
People were spending more time online – and it was commonly reported that social media and YouTube usage was going through the roof. Interestingly, popular educational company, Masterclass, had published a 100% increase in subscribers as people took the opportunity to learn new skills from leading experts in their fields.
The teams decided it could get the brand’s message through content that would warn and educate the audience about the dangers of the fraudulent schemes aimed at taking people’s hard-earned retirement income away from them. The idea was to reach them to beat the scammers at their own game, and win. The brand was going to show them how to Master the Scam.

Execution

Frank Abagnale is a former con man turned security consultant, famously portrayed by Leo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can, and the best-selling author of Scam Me If You Can. The team approached him to lead a masterclass in showing people how to protect themselves from criminal activity.

The result was a four-part series showcasing the most common scams used to defraud Canadian seniors, including:

The Grandparent scam – It’s a scam based on a caller posing as someone you know and love: your grandkid.

The CRA scam – It’s a scam caller posing as the Canada Revenue Agency, calling you to let you know you’re in deep trouble.

The Lottery scam – The scam leads you to believe that, by a stroke of luck, you are now richer than you were yesterday.

The Romance scam – Scammers get you to lower your guard through a steady diet of charm and dependency.

The execution of each of these needed to be laser focused as the entire media spend was under $25,000 for all episodes to reach a highly targeted audience.

Results

Despite a media budget of just $25,000, Catch the Scam generated over 1.2M unique views on YouTube and 817K on Facebook. The campaign launch generated significant top-tier broadcast and online media coverage across Canada and beyond with more than 35 million media impressions.

Frank W. Abagnale — the campaign’s celebrity teacher — completed three interviews with Global News, BNN Bloomberg and Yahoo! News, resulting in national media attention. Additional coverage appeared on CTV News, CP24, strategy, Wealth Professional and others.

Credits

Agency: Zulu Alpha Kilo
Chief Creative Officer: Zak Mroueh
Creative Director: Irfan Khan
ACD/Art Director: Kevin Sato
ACD/Writer: Vinay Parmar
Account Team: David Tremblay, Jenn Gaidola-Sobral
Planning Team: Tim Hopkins, Sean Bell
Client: HomeEquity Bank
Client: Yvonne Ziomecki, Vivianne Gauci, Erin Wilson, Niary Toodakian
Media: Iquanti
Media Team: Justin Lee & Yogesh Garbyal
Public Relations: Provident Communication
PR Team: Morgan McLellan & Matt Roth
Production Company: Zulubot/Levelwing
Director: Mills Allison
Producers: Mitch Cappe, Kristina Loschiavo
Post Production: Zulubot
Executive Producer: Tom Evans
Editors: Ashlee Mitchell, Shiv Harrilal
Motion Graphics: Ashlee Mitchell
Colour: Felipe Chaparro
Audio: Noah Mroueh