financial services

FirstBank Targets Male First Home Purchasers


FirstBank is appealing to a men caught between wanting to maintain their masculinity while still being able to get in touch with their metrosexual side when it comes to decorating their first home.

The Lakewood, Colo.-based bank is broadening its ongoing “Mortgages Made Easy” positioning and aids its male customers as they—for quite possibly the first time ever—browse Pinterest for interior design ideas. The advertising agency is TDA_Boulder.

The digital video and software campaign which broke April 3 shows a tool-studded workshop, power drill in hand and safety goggles tossed aside, where the video’s presenter asks, “Are you a man looking to create the perfect home? Would you like to browse Pinterest for inspiration, but you’re worried about using an 83%female website? FirstBank presents Man-O-Flage your Pinterest page.”

The video directs manly home decor enthusiasts to www.man-o-flage.com , where they can download a browser extension (free, also at the App Store) that will put one of three skins, “Meats,” “Power Tools,” or “Sporting,” over their computer screen’s Pinterest page. Once in place, the skin allows just one Pinterest image at a time—the one under the cursor—to show through. Other frilly online photos are replaced by raw beef, drill bits, a fly tackle box or the like. (All Pinterest text shows through, so our hero home decorator can see where to look next.) Nearby friends and coworkers will be none the wiser.  

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“Getting a mortgage should be easy, so you can focus on the fun parts of home ownership—and one of those is being able to decorate it however you want,” saysBrian Jensen, senior vice president of marketing, FirstBank. “From our experience, men are just as interested in that as women. Our goal is to bring a laugh to anyone interested in creating the perfect home. We thought this was a fun, innovative way to promote mortgages.”

The bank isn’t worried about insulting Pinterest with their gentle fun-poking approach.

“Pinterest is a great resource for new homeowners, and we felt it was the right platform for our message,” Jensen tells Marketing Daily “We felt this was more of a compliment than anything else.”

In addition to FirstBank’s YouTube site, the video will run as paid pre-roll on Hulu and YuMe.

Men are as excited by their first home purchase as women, and Pinterest is a great way for them to get decorating ideas. However, it is also a site whose viewers are primarilyfemale. FirstBank allows men to browse the site undetected by friends and coworkers.
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