In The Moment

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In The Moment

A young woman sits at her desk, struggling to concentrate on her homework despite an annoying sound pounding away in the next room. Finally, she gets up, walks down the hall and gazes at her dad, who’s lounging on the sofa, watching TV and bouncing a tennis ball on the floor. Evincing the simmering frustration employed by countless generations of parents, she asks: “Don’t you have work to do?”

Startled, her dad sits up, and with a self-satisfied grin, drops a piece of paper into a manila folder. Then he snaps it shut and says: "Mortgage application...done."

Rolling her eyes, the daughter turns to walk away, while a voiceover says: "The Mortgage application with 80% less paperwork. From Bank of America...Higher Standards."

Higher Standards moments, in which game announcers highlight key plays or players, are voiced right over what’s happening on the field and feature BOA-branded graphics

The spot, titled "Role Reversal," is one of several airing in Bank of America’s familiar "Higher Standards" campaign. Launched 14 months ago, the $100 million effort has several main goals: to win new customers, boost business and cement the bank’s image as a company that keeps raising the bar on its own performance.

The nation’s largest consumer bank, BOA does business in 29 states, although a pending merger with FleetBank could increase that number significantly, and boost the company’s total number of branch offices from 4,200 to 5,700. Consumer products include checking and savings accounts, mortgages and investment vehicles for high-net-worth individuals. All this makes for a wide potential customer base that breaks down into lots of age and income segments.

One of the most important of those segments is men, and for the past year, Fox Sports Net has been playing an increasingly important role in reaching them. Through its string of 20 regional sports networks, FSN reaches a total of 80 million households. Its ability to localize campaigns to individual markets made it natural for BOA, which, at least until the merger, does business primarily in the South, West and Midwest.

FSN "is an important, sizable component of our local advertising," says Peter Gardiner, partner and chief media officer at Deutsch Inc., BOA’s media buying agency.

What makes its relationship with BOA stand out, however, is the way FSN has been able to integrate the bank’s message into its programming. Central to the effort is a series of little vignettes the two tend to call "Higher Standards Moments."

These occur at several points in a game, typically after big plays. As announcers react and offer color commentary on what’s just happened, graphics appear on screen listing stats relevant to what they’re talking about. Announcers refer to the action as a "Higher Standards" play or moment and on-screen graphics bear the Bank of America Higher Standards logo.

The "moment" ends with a large BOA logo filling the screen and then disappearing just as game action picks up again.

What’s interesting about "Higher Standards" moments, Gardiner says, is what they aren’t: old fashioned, pre-produced spots that yank the viewer away from what’s happening on the field. Game announcers weave the “moments” right into their commentary and related graphics are overlaid on the field, so viewers aren’t taken away from the game while viewing them.

"Fox found a unique way to integrate the bank and Higher Standards into game action, " Gardiner says. "That’s what we think is so special about this deal."

In every case, the "moment" has to do with what’s happening in a particular game. "It’s not like some meaningless statistic comes up," Gardiner says. "It’s either something relevant to the game or relevant to something the fan would be interested in. There’s a lot of thought given to how it’s displayed and how it’s communicated on air to the fans."

During an Oklahoma State University game, one "moment" singled out the team’s legendary defensive line, while in a University of Missouri game, quarterback Brad Smith got his "moment" in the sun.

In advance of each game, producers try to anticipate the key players and potential high points, so they can produce appropriate graphics and have them ready once the action begins. They also produce "moments" about team history, to be used in case of a boring period or blowout.

Fox Sports Net began integrating Higher Standards moments into games last year, starting out during Major League Baseball season. This fit nicely with the banking industry’s busy season for new checking accounts, which revs up in spring and extends through the fall. Later, BOA added a presence in college football and basketball.

Each game tends to carry two or three BOA commercials and a similar number of "Higher Standards" moments.

At the end of each Higher Standards moment, Bank of America’s logo zooms in to fill the most of the screen, then zips away just as action in the game resumes

The relationship with Fox Sports Net has also reaped BOA other dividends. Last year, when the bank sponsored a Cardinals clinic for St. Louis area kids, Fox Sports Net Midwest covered it on its "Regional Sports Report" and when BOA treated local kids to a game, FSN announcers talked about it on the air.

While BOA’s relationship with Fox Sports Net helps the bank reach millions of avid local sports fans, other cable networks deliver the "Higher Standards" message to different segments of the audience. Spots on ESPN, TNT, TBS, VH1, Nick at Nite, and other networks target a broad audience, while schedules on CNN, CNBC A&E and Discovery aim for high-net-worth individuals. "We use a pretty broad list of cable networks," Gardiner says. "Our choice depends on the product we’re advertising."

A year into its relationship with Fox Sports Net, BOA has been tallying results from the campaign. "We’re getting some pretty good increases in awareness and also of consideration of the bank and its products," Gardiner says. "We’ve been very pleasantly surprised that it has gotten the traction that it has, but with two or three of these features in a game plus two or three ads, it’s a pretty powerful way of connecting with the consumer."

"Fox found a unique way to integrate the bank and Higher Standards into game action. That’s what we think is so special about this deal."

—Peter Gardiner, partner and chief media officer, Deutsch

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