First Financial Bank “Putting You First” Brand Awareness Campaign

The Situation

First Financial Bank is a 150-year-old regional bank that has always put a focus on serving and supporting its local community. However, with increasing competition they were getting drowned out. With low brand awareness, First Financial knew it needed to refresh its brand, reposition its value and reintroduce itself to the market.

Creative Strategy

We leaned into what some may consider a weakness – their size. Enough people have had experiences with the big banks to understand that “big can’t always put you first.” First Financial has the history of service and operational flexibility to work in ways that big banks can’t. And while big banks have systems that allow them to take thousands upon thousands of loan requests, that also means the “system” can very easily work against the customer. Campaign elements included TV, OTT, social video, social static, digital ads, OOH, podcasts, audio spots, direct mail, and a landing page.

Results

The integrated brand campaign targeted personal, business and commercial customers in 2022. Loan growth exceeded 20% and total assets increased by $674M.