"An example of creative capitalism" — Bill Gates
A sign of the times: between 2008 and 2013 there was not a single Super-Bowl ad from a financial services companies. In 2015, US insurer Nationwide was the second-most mentioned brand on Twitter during the game, according to Salesforce Marketing Cloud. But three-quarters of those conversations were negative as viewers vented their disgust with Nationwide's ad about a dead child, and the insurer had to issue an apology. The company is sitting out this year's game.
The 2014 ad from BankofAmericaMerrill Lynch is particularly interesting; it is about cause marketing or cause sponsorship. As such, it contains no information at all about financial services. This is from the Financial Times in early 2014 [1]:
The BoA ad will declare that for 24 hours everyone can download a new song from U2, ‘Invisible’, for free. The bank will then donate $1 for every download to a global fund to fight Aids, organized in association with Red, the philanthropic group co-founded by Bono. This comes on top of a $10m ‘simple’ donation from BoA. Brian Mynihan: ‘This is an advdertisement but it’s not really an ad … The aim is to create heat and energy’. Banks such as BoA have strong motives to ‘engage’ in innovative ways. A poll by Edelman, the public relations company, suggests that half of all consumers distrust banks.
The philanthropic sector is under pressure to become more innovative too. Government aid budgets are being cut and the attention span of consumers –or donors- is becoming more fickle. Of course this approach is not without risks for both sides. Bono, for example, admits that U2 was initially wary about embracing a bank. Bono: ‘When we looked at BoA and go to know Mr. Moynihan, we saw that values were important to them and they were trying to compensate for the financial mess’. There are more rumors at Davos that more deals are being discussed.
Recently, the FT came back to this topic with a Bono interview about 'conscious consumerism':
It is a decade since the star went to the WEF to launch Red, the brand campaign that began with the aim of ending the transmission of HIV/Aids from pregnant women to their unborn children. Described by Bill Gates as an example of “creative capitalism”, Red’s early partners included Starbucks, Apple and Nike, which made products under the Red brand and donated proceeds to the fight against Aids in Africa. The campaign has over the past 10 years raised more than $350m. “Corporate social responsibility is a phrase that is in common usage now but it wasn’t back then,” Bono says, speaking to the Financial Times on the telephone from “bubblin’ Dublin”, the day before flying to Davos.
An aim of Red, which he dreamt up with Bobby Shriver, a US lawyer and nephew of John F Kennedy, was to engage companies, and their customers and employees, in the fight against Aids, encouraging them to make and market Red-branded products, rather than just write a cheque. “Red understood early on that corporate social responsibility was not just for how companies gave their money but also for how companies make money.” Now, the challenge facing Bono and Red is the next decade. New partners have signed up, notably Bank of America, which in 2014 pledged $10m to Red, donating $1 for every free copy of the U2 track “Invisible” downloaded the day of that year’s Super Bowl. The bank recently pledged another $10m and has embarked on initiatives that include displaying at its ATMs images shot by the photographer Rankin of HIV-positive mothers and their children, who were born HIV-free thanks to their mothers taking antiretroviral medication.
“If we can get these drugs consistently into the hands of these mothers they will not transmit [the disease] to their children and we can cut off its growth,” says Brian Moynihan, Bank of America’s chief executive. Bono says the money Red has generated is “critical to the people whose lives it is saving”. As important, he says, “is the heat, the excitement”, the campaign has generated in terms of enlightening people who may never have thought twice about the Aids epidemic. “You can go to a Bank of America ATM now in Toledo, Ohio, and see a picture of children born without Aids because of Red. That has an effect.”
[1] Gillian Tett: “How Bono and B0fA made sweet music”, Financial Times, January 31, 2014. Note that the article appears in the very same issue of the FT where BofA’s $8.5bn settlement is discussed!
[2] Matthew Garrahan: "Bono surveys a Red decade of conscious consumerism", Financial Times, 21 January 2016.
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