2021 Winner
GoldBest in Finance and Services
SilverBest in CSR
SilverBest Cultural Insights
BronzeBest New Insight
BMO
"Financial Fairness"
FCB & UM
"Financial Fairness"
FCB & UM
Women now control 40% of global wealth, but while they are financially more empowered than ever before, their financial confidence hasn’t kept pace. They have been culturally primed to believe that they don’t have the knowledge to manage their own financial decisions. The majority (55%) of female investors believe they know less than the average investor, compared to only 27% of male investors. Most married women (58%) defer financial planning decisions to their husbands, even if they are
the primary breadwinner.
To overcome the confidence gap, the agency needed to understand its cause. Social listening analysis made the issue clear; women are surrounded by insidious financial stereotypes. Labels like “trophy wife”, “gold diggers”, “shopaholics” and gender norms that encourage “retail therapy.” Even in the classroom, young girls receive unconscious cues that make them doubt their math skills. Women grow up in a culture that tells them they are bad with money. They are constantly served the cultural narrative that women are reckless, incapable, and ignorant around finances. Is it any wonder that so many of them believe it?
BMO has a strong track record of championing the advancement of women: from the bank’s long standing support of women entrepreneurs, to achieving 40% female leadership within the bank itself. In an industry that’s traditionally run by men, for men, BMO stands out as the bank that invests in women. BMO has set out to fight gender bias in the financial system by addressing the root causes of women’s financial disempowerment and to expose the ingrained financial stereotypes that hurt women’s financial confidence, in order to rewrite women’s relationships with their finances.
Financial Fairness is a brand campaign focused on bringing awareness to bias against women within the financial system. The campaign launched with the video ‘Jane’, to show how a lifetime of negative stereotyping erodes a woman’s confidence with money. The story spotlights seemingly harmless moments to demonstrate their cumulative impact on Jane. The video then flips the script, showing that if we can #bankruptthebias we can help dismantle the myth that women are bad with money. Finally, they rewrote the model of what a financial expert is. They launched the Chief Allowance Officer, making a young girl BMO’s financial expert who taught other girls financial basics with online videos.
The use of social listening uncovered financial stereotypes that flood our feeds every day. In order to change the conversation, they had to be on the platforms where these stereotypes exist. The film, short form social videos, and influencer content exposed the issues and all assets drove to their content hub (https://bmoforwomen.com/ourcommitment/) to learn more about this unconscious
but harmful bias.
The campaign used social media to also rewrite the bias with GIFs that flipped the meaning of common stereotypes from harmful to empowering, intercepting anyone about to use the label with a new, positive meaning. To create real, lasting change, they created a petition on change.org that empowers people to advocate to remove biased language from dictionaries.
Most women experience financial bias, but few are aware of the impact. The challenge was to both expose and change the bias in a seamless digital experience. Using short and long-format videos, they deployed a two-pronged strategy based on context and affinity. YouTube targeting allowed them to place their videos ahead of biased content, so they could magnify the problem. For example, a reality show video that showed “trophy wives” or the “Gold Digger” music video. They also used keywords and interests on Twitter that surrounded the same problematic terms and they targeted audiences who are more likely to advocate and share BMO’s message by using keywords and interests on Twitter that support the solution.
Using Facebook’s Canvas Unit, they were able to deepen engagement by demonstrating not only the issue of financial stereotypes, but the solution within one digital experience. All assets drove to their website https://bmoforwomen.com/ourcommitment/ to further deepen understanding of
the societal issue.
Ad recall was +19.8 pts (compared to a financial norm of +6.1), garnering 90MM+ impressions and 50MM views of Jane videos. Brand Favourability was +7.1 pts while financial services norm is only +0.7 pts. There was a 99.3% positive/neutral social sentiment. The campaign drove 83,400 customers to BMOForWomen.com, a 348% increase in visits compared to their campaign objective. 42% of users spent more than 15 seconds on the campaign’s content page, up from 33% during last year’s campaign. There was a 109% increase in the use of #BMOforWomen compared to 2019 campaign and a 783% increase in use of #proudtoworkatBMO.
the primary breadwinner.
To overcome the confidence gap, the agency needed to understand its cause. Social listening analysis made the issue clear; women are surrounded by insidious financial stereotypes. Labels like “trophy wife”, “gold diggers”, “shopaholics” and gender norms that encourage “retail therapy.” Even in the classroom, young girls receive unconscious cues that make them doubt their math skills. Women grow up in a culture that tells them they are bad with money. They are constantly served the cultural narrative that women are reckless, incapable, and ignorant around finances. Is it any wonder that so many of them believe it?
BMO has a strong track record of championing the advancement of women: from the bank’s long standing support of women entrepreneurs, to achieving 40% female leadership within the bank itself. In an industry that’s traditionally run by men, for men, BMO stands out as the bank that invests in women. BMO has set out to fight gender bias in the financial system by addressing the root causes of women’s financial disempowerment and to expose the ingrained financial stereotypes that hurt women’s financial confidence, in order to rewrite women’s relationships with their finances.
Financial Fairness is a brand campaign focused on bringing awareness to bias against women within the financial system. The campaign launched with the video ‘Jane’, to show how a lifetime of negative stereotyping erodes a woman’s confidence with money. The story spotlights seemingly harmless moments to demonstrate their cumulative impact on Jane. The video then flips the script, showing that if we can #bankruptthebias we can help dismantle the myth that women are bad with money. Finally, they rewrote the model of what a financial expert is. They launched the Chief Allowance Officer, making a young girl BMO’s financial expert who taught other girls financial basics with online videos.
The use of social listening uncovered financial stereotypes that flood our feeds every day. In order to change the conversation, they had to be on the platforms where these stereotypes exist. The film, short form social videos, and influencer content exposed the issues and all assets drove to their content hub (https://bmoforwomen.com/ourcommitment/) to learn more about this unconscious
but harmful bias.
The campaign used social media to also rewrite the bias with GIFs that flipped the meaning of common stereotypes from harmful to empowering, intercepting anyone about to use the label with a new, positive meaning. To create real, lasting change, they created a petition on change.org that empowers people to advocate to remove biased language from dictionaries.
Most women experience financial bias, but few are aware of the impact. The challenge was to both expose and change the bias in a seamless digital experience. Using short and long-format videos, they deployed a two-pronged strategy based on context and affinity. YouTube targeting allowed them to place their videos ahead of biased content, so they could magnify the problem. For example, a reality show video that showed “trophy wives” or the “Gold Digger” music video. They also used keywords and interests on Twitter that surrounded the same problematic terms and they targeted audiences who are more likely to advocate and share BMO’s message by using keywords and interests on Twitter that support the solution.
Using Facebook’s Canvas Unit, they were able to deepen engagement by demonstrating not only the issue of financial stereotypes, but the solution within one digital experience. All assets drove to their website https://bmoforwomen.com/ourcommitment/ to further deepen understanding of
the societal issue.
Ad recall was +19.8 pts (compared to a financial norm of +6.1), garnering 90MM+ impressions and 50MM views of Jane videos. Brand Favourability was +7.1 pts while financial services norm is only +0.7 pts. There was a 99.3% positive/neutral social sentiment. The campaign drove 83,400 customers to BMOForWomen.com, a 348% increase in visits compared to their campaign objective. 42% of users spent more than 15 seconds on the campaign’s content page, up from 33% during last year’s campaign. There was a 109% increase in the use of #BMOforWomen compared to 2019 campaign and a 783% increase in use of #proudtoworkatBMO.
Credits
Client: BMOHead, Marketing and Strategy: Catherine Roche
VP North American Brand & Social Media: Jennifer Carli
Director, Brand Advertising: Shelley Johnsen
Manager, Brand Management & Enterprise Marketing: Kaleigh MacMaster
Creative Agency: FCB Canada
Chief Creative Officers: Nancy Crimi-Lamanna and Jeff Hilts
Group Creative Directors: Andrew MacPhee & Jeremiah McNama
Associate Creative Director: Elma Karabegovic
Copywriter: Shannon McCarroll
Broadcast Producer: Anne-Marie Martignago
EVP, General Manager: Tracy Little
VP, Group Account Director: Erin Howes
Account Director: Allison Lochhead
Account Supervisor: Ali Gayowski
Project Manager: Camille vanGroll
Chief Strategy Officer: Shelley Brown
Planning Director: Eryn LeMesurier
Production Company: Untitled Films
Director: Hubert Davis
Executive Producer: Peter Davis
Line Producer: Trudy Turner
DOP: Kiel Milligan
Editorial: Rooster Post Production
Editor: Michelle Czukar
Executive Producer: Samantha MacLaren
Post Production: Alter Ego
Colourist: Eric Whipp
Flame Artist: Darren Achim
Music: Apollo
Music Director/Composer - Apollo: Daenen Bramberger
Executive Producer - Apollo: Tom Hutch
Casting: Shasta Lutz, Jigsaw Casting
Media Agency: UM
VP Client Business Partner: Kate Mateer
Group Director: Tim Davies
Director, Connection Planning: Katey Gault
Account Manager: Rachel Pearson
Campaign Manager, Social: Alex Perkes
Director, Performance: Hailey Smith
Associate Director, Programmatic Strategy: Isaac Bunn
Senior Associate, Campaign Manager: Sai Dubakka