(Mary Ellen Dugan, Chief Marketing Officer, Envestnet) A powerful marketing campaign should align with its brand’s values, resonate with its intended audience, and ideally, make an impact that drives conversion – especially, a specific and relevant conversation with your target audience.
And I believe we achieved just that with our award-winning, omnichannel brand campaign, Fully Vested, featuring Mr. Krabs, launched in July 2022. This week The Drum, a leading global publisher for the marketing and media industries, hosted their annual Drum Awards for B2B, and Envestnet was one the night’s biggest winners:
- Chair Award – Winner
- Best Corporate or Brand Website – Winner
- Best Product Launch – Winner
- Best B2B Brand Campaign – Highly Commended
- Best Digital Campaign – Highly Commended
- Best B2B Customer Experience – Highly Commended
- Most Innovative or Creative Use of Content – Nominated
The Drum Awards celebrate effective business marketing worldwide, and we’re honored for our wins and incredibly proud to have been awarded the prestigious Chair Award.
To celebrate our team’s hard work, creativity, and dedication, let’s take a quick look at what we tried to accomplish – and what inspired us.
Sparking interest and shifting the conversation
Envestnet has been one of the world’s leading financial technology brands for over twenty years, continuously enhancing our financial ecosystem to support advisors in delivering impactful financial advice to their clients.
During these twenty-plus years, the financial space and audience have evolved, and so must the visual representation of investors and what financial planning looks like. Among a sea of advertising clichés – grey-haired retirees walking down the beach or a client sitting at a conference table with their advisor – it was important to set ourselves apart as we set out to communicate our brand promise of enabling the Intelligent Financial Life.
After some careful analysis and qualitative focus-group research, in partnership with the team at HeyLet’sGo, we called upon a well-known pop culture figure: Mr. Krabs, from the one and only SpongeBob SquarePants television show. As a small business owner with quite complex finances, he was the perfect fictional “client” to engage our audience in a new and interesting way, while showcasing the capabilities of the Envestnet platform. Even with a dynamic client such as Mr. Krabs, advisors can still be a financial hero.
Working with Paramount and looking at past episodes’ storylines, we used our new client portal to create a fictional dashboard to represent Mr. Krabs’ finances (including $1 from selling SpongeBob’s soul). Mr. Krabs could look at his expenses, cash flow, and investments, just like a real client working with a nonfictional advisor. In addition, we produced a three-minute film (an in-depth conversation with Mr. Krabs and a financial advisor), three TV commercials, and approximately 20 pieces of web content featuring Mr. Krabs. All creative drove financial advisors to our interactive experience of the new Envestnet Client Portal, where they could see first-hand how to make the Intelligent Financial Life a reality for ANY client.
Admittedly, Mr. Krabs was a very specific, unexpected choice. We were looking for a character who could really showcase a complex financial situation, with both daily needs and future goals. As a small business owner, Mr. Krabs fit the bill! His advisor is key to helping him manage taxes, insurance needs, and investments just like any nonfictional client. He also has reach. In 2021, SpongeBob was the 18th most in-demand show worldwide, across all genres. And importantly to us, his brand recognition spans multiple generations. As our research had told us, despite being an unconventional character for a financial B2B campaign, he resonated with our target audience.
Campaign results show that viewers engaged
A skeptic might argue that research is one thing, and results another. A well-defined marketing campaign should of course have tangible, measurable results. When we saw the effects of the campaign, there was no doubt that our audience had connected with Mr. Krabs and our message of helping advisors deliver the Intelligent Financial Life. The creative didn’t just drive an emotional connection, it drove emotional interaction. As a product demo of our new Client Portal, it exceeded our engagement expectations.
96% of visitors viewed the complete demo experience
They didn’t click, take a look, and bounce. They stayed and soaked in what the campaign had to say. That’s huge.
Average time on site rose to 4+ minutes
This specific campaign changed how our site visitors behaved in a positive way. Our long-form content paid off as our audience spent minutes interacting with our brand, our product demo, and learning about the capabilities of our financial ecosystem.
51% of visitors requested more information about how Envestnet is driving the Intelligent Financial Life
More than half of those who visited us wanted to know more! This shows us that people are curious about the concept of an Intelligent Financial Life. And as they know more, we hope they talk about it more. We want every advisor to understand how they could make the Intelligent Financial Life a reality for ANY client.
Extraordinary results by any standards
Analyzing the data, we were of course extremely happy with the results of the Mr. Krabs campaign. The fact that the campaign is now being recognized and awarded within the B2B industry as a benchmark in effective marketing, is proof that the campaign delivered beyond expectations.
We knew from the start that this was not your ordinary financial industry campaign, and now we know that the results as well, were anything but ordinary.
There’s more to learn about delivering the Intelligent Financial Life
Carving out a new path within financial marketing took a great deal of courage from everyone involved. I want to personally thank our internal Brand and Creative team, as well as the broader marketing team for their hard work and efforts. We also want to recognize our partners at HeyLet’sGo for all their efforts – we appreciate your expertise, experience, and guidance.
I am excited about our future plans to showcase how Envestnet is Fully Vested in delivering the Intelligent Financial Life, and how our financial ecosystem can continue to turn all our Envestnet users into financial heroes. Stay tuned!
