SANTANDER
PUSH OFF POLITELY
BRIEF
There’s something deeply heartbreaking about the impersonation scammer that calls up a lonely grandad who hasn’t spoken to anyone in week or two and, through false-friendship, cajoling and pressurisation, dupes an old man into handing over the savings he’d been putting aside for his grandchildren.
All too often, the victim is so ashamed and embarrassed that they don’t even report it. Imagine. The work of an entire lifetime: gone, in a stupid five minute phone call.
Our brief from Santander was as simple as it was sad. Stop gran and grandad dishing out their personal details to any caller kind enough to listen to their life-story.
IDEA
Who are the influencers for nans and grandads? We needed people of a certain age, of course. They needed to be trustworthy and wholly respectable. But also brave, fearless and fairly formidable.
It didn’t take us long to arrive at the perfect solution: The Chelsea Pensioners. Instantly recognisable. Utterly respectable. And fierce as anything, some of these lads saw off the Wehrmacht, they’re hardly going to have a problem telling a scammer to do one.
Aside from their big day out on Remembrance Day, the Pensioners don’t do tonnes of personal appearances or brand work. If anything, when we called them up to talk to them about a partnership with Santander (“Yes, that’s right, the bank. Yes! We did use to be called Abbey National…”) we couldn’t help but feel that we sounded something like cold-calling scammers ourselves. But once we had explained that Britain’s Seniors needed their help and protection one last time, the Pensioners immediately signed up for service.
RESULTS
In total, we landed 56 sizable hits. As hoped, this was lapped up by the biggies. 23 pieces of national coverage, including print hits in The Telegraph, The Sun, Daily Mail, Metro, Daily Express and Daily Star. There might have been some social coverage, we didn’t check. We can, however, proudly say that there were zero paid Instagrammers involved. It felt really nice to get back to good old-fashioned insight-led PR.
Over 90% of coverage used the hero imagery and/or content alongside at least two of our key messages, and each and every piece led with the astonishing insight that we had uncovered around Brits simply being too polite to hang up on scammers.
Especially heartwarming was the Chelsea Pensioners reaction to the campaign. They all had anecdotes about friends and loved ones getting ripped-off and were thrilled that finally a bank was helping seniors stand up to scammers.
