The National Bank asks, where will you go?
September 15 2010, 12:03 pm | | 35 Comments
DraftFCB, Auckland has put to air a big budget TVC for The National Bank.
Client: The National Bank
Executive Creative Director: James Mok
Creative Team: Matt Simpkins, Steve McCabe, Kelly Lovelock
Agency Producer: Pip Mayne
Director: Gaysorn Thavat
Producer: Mark Foster
Production Company: Robbers Dog
Post Production: Blockhead
Music: Nylon
35 Comments
vomit
Epic misfire. after 25 years as a national bank customer I’m sorely tempted to go to another bank. Since when did erzatz Dr Seuss count as a credible tone of voice for someone asking you to trust them with your money after the biggest near death experience the finance sector has experienced in a generation. Be interesting to see how many customers use their brains & vote with their feet. But at least they ditched the Vivaldi.
Looks great. Has some nice moments. Vast improvement stalking horse.
People are going to be dicks about it, but I reckon it’s not half bad.
12:38PM
Did you not even listen to it. Looks like they were stuck with Vivaldi.
er..still Vivaldi. Same piece, different movement. Changed from winter to spring, genius…
Noce looking though, expensive.
Didn’t DDB just do a poem for Pams?
Craig Parker was a bad choice for VO. Overused and underdone.
think Pams was BC&F, but the storytelling of this add reminded me of the PAMS ad when I heard it on telly the other night. . .
Nice job. Pretty fresh for bank work. Obviously had a bit of its heart torn out and left on the cutting room floor.
Nowhere near as bad as you all make it out to be. Beautifully crafted – a shame about the VO, but otherwise it’s pretty unique.
Sounds like they were stuck with Vivaldi and the same smug voice over.
Sorry I’m going to be “a dick” about it.
I can see the need for a big leap away from where the bank was (old and stale).
Good point vs bad points:
The positioning as – the bank to take you places, and explore your ambitions is fine.
But the ad simply doesn’t carry that off.
They don’t go anywhere or really achieve any ambitions. And for that matter the same goes for the micro site – if you click anything, it loads up the official site and then if you want to back click has to reload up all over again (you might as well just go straight to the official site for all it’s worth, plus there’s no incentive and not enough engagement to make you want to interact with micro site.
The tone of the VO and Vivaldi don’t really feel right for the Dr Seuss and imagery (it feels like it’s from another ad. It’s like your dad dancing the funky chicken your favourite hard house club – entertaining but mostly weird).
I love Dr Seuss but in relation to a bank I doubt people will realise what it is and will simply be left wondering WTF. At the end of the day there’s no clear pay off for the viewer. It’s clear lots of money has been spent to get your attention but you don’t really know why.
There’s some good elements but in the end it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
It’s a tricky market to find a new space for a bank at the moment, but in the end I can’t think of any demographic that this will resonate with.
Again sorry – E for effort
“DraftFCB, Auckland has put to air a big budget TVC for The National Bank.”
Where, may we ask, did the big budget go?
The synthetic strings really give it that “South Island Finance Company” vibe.
3:05, you clearly work for another bank, to care so much.
Listening to some of these negative comments makes me think the people making them never worked on a big piece of business like a bank before. Its a constant struggle to bring your vision for an ad like this to life. Keep this in mind while slagging ads off.
It seems there has been a compromise of sorts here, because clearly there seems to be footage missing. Either the client or the agency made a few decisions that have made this feel like a bit of a mish mash. The music is clearly wrong, and the voice over sounds totally at odds to what the pictures need. Try watching it without sound and the pics looks great, performance lovely, edit rubbish.
Well. They kept Vivaldi, the horse, and the VO from the last ads.
Pretty obvious that the agency wouldn’t of wanted that.
And 3.20 probably works for another music production outfit.
And 3.20 probably works for another music production outfit.
what 3.37 said
Who does a campaign like this without a substantial focus on digital? The heavy leaning on TV and not much else feels about 10 years behind the times.
Still if it gets the phones ringing, sells product and retains customers then it’s done it’s job. Not sure it will deliver any of this though.
Nice caravan.
8.26, patience child. Patience.
Is there any money left in the budget so I can go to Prego on Friday?
What Paul Taylor said.
probably a nice concept to being with that has been killed by committees
awful v/o and why was it not animated to fit the suess?
I really bloody like this ad, it is really growing on me. It’s a lovely treatment and I love the funny house and beautiful shots. It’s quirky and really unexpected. I’d love to have this on my reel.
And no I don’t work for Draft and never have.
What Jim Francis and Paul Taylor said.
What Simon Smith, Jim Francis, Paul Taylor and 3.37 said.
What Paul Taylor, Jim Francis, Simon Smith and I said.
Good to see censorship on the post is alive and well.
Knob jockeys.
What they said
Sounds to me like this:
Client: Take us somewhere different.
SFX: Ad gets made.
Client: We didn’t mean what we said.
There are so many good, kind tolerant people in this world!
That ad is embarrassing it is so bad. I change channel and yes, I seriously may change bank. If that is the best image they can come up with I dread to think what they are thinking when it comes to investing.
Dumbed down stupid dialogue.
My five year old may join the bank. He can have my place.
i am just a media student but liked the ad so much i thought i’d google what people were saying about it. definitely think i’ll reconsider my career options as your industry seems a pretty unpleasant place to try and do something different.
I hate this new ad- so stupid with its Dr Seuss-like “you’ve got shoes in your feet and feet in your shoes” blah blah.
Bring back the crazy horse stalking randomly in classic buildings with envigorating classical music.
National bank doesn’t want ad ad that sounds like a kindy lesson!