NS&I - Bonds make a huge comeback

Agency: EHS Brann

CHALLENGE

On a cold November day back in 1956, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold MacMillan launched Premium Bonds. On that first day alone, more than £5m worth of bonds were bought.

Today, the Premium Bond prize fund is worth £32bn, and is run by the government-backed institution National Savings & Investments (NS&I). Around 40 per cent of the UK population holds bonds and two £1m draws are held every month.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Premium Bonds, it created six extra £1m draws - three were held on the launch anniversary in November and three will be in June.

NS&I wanted to encourage more people to buy bonds and to create a buzz around the first of these draws, for which tickets had to be purchased by October.

STRATEGY

The savings organisation worked with agency EHS Brann and decided to run a campaign across direct mail, TV, online and press.

"We wanted to drive sales and create excitement around a product that was radical 50 years ago and still is now," says Tim Mack, head of marketing and communications at NS&I. "We had run integrated campaigns before and knew that any DM would be supported by TV work."

EXECUTION

NS&I wanted to encourage people to buy bonds online and over the phone, as well as through its partner outlets the Post Office and Tesco where customers have traditionally bought the majority of bonds. Creative work encouraged people to buy bonds from all these, as well as building awareness and driving sales.

- DRTV: A DRTV campaign, fronted by Sir Alan Sugar, was created by Chick Smith Trott. This encouraged purchase via phone, web or through the shops, depending on the time of day. Adverts shown in the evening drove viewers online, rather than to the call centre.

Calls were answered straight away by a live agent. "If you've got someone's attention with an ad or a mailing, the last thing they want to hear is an engaged tone or menu," says Mack.

- Direct mail: Mailings were sent to existing customers with the potential to buy more bonds (the limit is £30,000) and those who had made a recent transaction. The pack resembled an invitation to a celebration with gold lettering on the envelope.

- Online: NS&I spent £50,000 on search marketing as well as placing banner ads and Skyscrapers on specialist money sites and large lifestyle portals including Motley Fool and MSN.

- Email: Fifty thousand names were bought from cold lists. However, given that 40 per cent of the UK population already holds bonds, duplication was a challenge. "At the moment we're in the process of creating an email database, but as it's difficult to match email to postal addresses, we could be emailing someone who's been a customer for years," says Mack.

- Press: Press ads were placed in titles that had delivered good response, including the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph.

RESULTS

More than £2bn worth of bonds sold in October alone, making it the best-performing month in 2006. £177m of these sales were attributable to the mail pack, with £99m coming from search.

Mack described the revenue generated by search as "amazing" but is certain that it was the media combination that made the overall impact. "With an integrated campaign like this, it was difficult to isolate the effects of single channels, with the exception of mail and online. But the fact that we've seen such an overall uplift can only be because we're running work in all media."