ANZ's first global brand campaign supporting its 'super regional strategy' and featuring Aussie actor Simon Baker, coming to NZ

By Gareth Vaughan

ANZ, which touts itself as a "super regional" bank, will bring its first global brand campaign to New Zealand later this year.

Featuring Aussie actor Simon Baker in character as Patrick Jane from television show The Mentalist, the advertising campaign was launched in Australia and Asia this week.  ANZ, which in New Zealand is currently mulling the ongoing use of the National Bank brand, says the new advertising campaign follows the launch of its super regional strategy in 2008-09 and the recent appointment of Whybin TBWA as its new global advertising agency.

A spokeswoman for ANZ New Zealand told interest.co.nz that the campaign will run across all ANZ's 28 markets including New Zealand. She said the adverts were likely to start airing in New Zealand towards the end of the year.

"Patrick Jane will be used for television advertising only," the spokeswoman said. "There will also be press, magazine and digital media."

The adverts aim to "reinforce" how ANZ's customers can make the most of the bank's network to connect their banking across the Asia-Pacific region. The ANZ Rugby World Cup adverts will also continue.

The Super Regional Strategy was launched by ANZ Group CEO Mike Smith in October 2008, Under Smith, a former HSBC executive, ANZ has been organised around its three geographies – Australia, New Zealand (headed by NZ CEO David Hisco) and Asia Pacific – and its global Institutional client business. Each geography focuses on two customer segments being retail and commercial, which are coordinated globally.

In 2008 Smith said the aim was to shift ANZ away from a collection of standalone product and customer businesses to simpler, larger business structures aligned with the geography and customers they serve. He said it would reduce the management layers between him and customers' serving staff from up to 12 to about seven.

“This lowers risk by reducing bureaucracy and complexity. It creates greater transparency and accountability within the Group to improve performance for our shareholders and customers," Smith said in September 2008. "It also establishes a scalable structure that will support ANZ’s future growth and expansion.”

After 15 years of economic growth the bank was heading into a "very different" environment, Smith also said in late 2008. "Our new structure puts ANZ into the best possible shape to take advantage of this new reality and accelerate our progress towards becoming a super regional bank and more customer-focused."

The bank has since expanded in Asia buying the Asian retail, wealth and commercial operations of the Royal Bank of Scotland in a A$685 million deal.

Joyce Phillips, ANZ's Group Managing Director for Strategy, M&A, Marketing and Innovation, says the new advertising campaign reflects a need for a globally consistent campaign that supports ANZ's super regional strategy.

 “It will help build awareness and relevance of ANZ in our key emerging markets while reinforcing what it is that makes us different from other banks," she said.

She describes Patrick Jane as the "ideal" personification of ANZ’s brand as "insightful, sophisticated and worldly," but with a strong connection to Australia.

“Patrick Jane knows what people are thinking because he lives in their world – he’s an observer of life and that’s what we strive to be,” Phillips says.

See another one of the TV adverts here.

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