THE CONTEXT
In 2018, the fintech world was booming, life for people within all generations had become more complex, and for Millennials, their life paths had become increasingly nonlinear. As a regional bank, with some of the best products in banking, Citizens needed to modernize to catch up with the rest of the world—or risk being left behind.

THE STRATEGY
Acknowledge and uplift the work that consumers have done to reach their full potential, showing how they’re Made Ready for all that life comes at them, and Citizens is here to help them along their journey.

THE EXECUTION
We launched with mass media on television, online, social, audio (terrestrial radio and podcast streaming platforms), experiential, and OOH. With Citizens having a very strong footprint in the Northeast Region, specifically Philadelphia, Boston, and Cleveland at the time, we ensured that our work was geographically relevant and situationally made sense, too.

One of the biggest launch moments for us was the “Made Ready for Music” event in Philadelphia to honor Questlove, who embodies the spirit of what it means to be Made Ready. We hosted an event at his alma mater, Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, crowdsourcing a video using glasses that audience members were given. This was to acknowledge the glasses that Questlove is known to wear. The Roots released even released a new song for the campaign. We even had a media partnership with Vulture!

Additionally, Citizens Bank has the naming rights for the Philadelphia Phillies’ ballpark in Philly. As a result, we created in-stadium ads, experiences for moments within the game that added the fan experience, all of which was grounded in real, Phillies phans’ insights.

As the campaign progressed along, we integrated this platform into Citizens’ product campaigns (banking, student loans, mortgages and refinancing), too!