• by Aaron Baar , August 8, 2008

Regional player KeyBank aims to put a twist on the traditional testimonial advertising, with stories (coaxed out of consumers via a professional interviewer) animated in a distinctive style.

The new advertising campaign, which breaks in the Cleveland company's key markets Friday, uses experiences of KeyBank customers as told to Starlee Kine, of NPR's "This American Life." The stories are then illustrated by Tim Tomkinson, who is known for his work with Rolling Stone magazine. The result is a style that is intended to stand apart from other traditional testimonial-style advertising, as well as the aspirational-type advertising that dominates the financial services category, Karen Haefling, KeyBank's chief marketing and communications officer, tells Marketing Daily.

"We went to our agency and said: 'We know this is not a new concept, but we would like to take a shot at doing something that's differentiated," Haefling says of the style. "It's meant to be a more practical approach rather than aspirational."

In one of the commercials, from Cramer-Krasselt in Chicago, U.S. Olympic swimmer Diana Munz tells how she decided where to keep her gold medal. As she tells her story, animation depicts her storing the medal in a clam, à la a pearl, putting the clam in a blowfish and having the blowfish swallowed by a secure steel whale. Instead, she opts to put it in a KeyBank safe deposit box. Other spots depict a man's decision-making process on how to finance a home remodel, and another family's work to create college savings funds.

Alhough she is not heard in the spots, Kine was hired by the agency to conduct the interviews to make the stories more relatable. "We really wanted to get the client's point of view, and to do that we really needed to have a professional interviewer," Haefling says.

The campaign's tagline is, "Money needs attention." The line is born out of research and reports that many Americans are carrying too much debt and aren't saving enough, Haefling says. "We want to make sure people are doing all the right things for themselves," she says.

To that end, the bank has also set up a microsite, www.moneyneedsattention.com, that will feature additional client stories, calculators and games to make people aware of all the services KeyBank offers, Haefling says.

The spots will begin airing in seven of KeyBank's markets: Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis, Ind.; Boise, Idaho; Seattle/Tacoma, Wash.; Portland, Ore., and the Hudson Valley, N.Y. The campaign also includes print and online components as well. Those executions feature Tomkinson's drawings with quick lines from the subjects depicted. For instance, Munz's billboard shows an illustration of her in front of a pool, next to the line, "You don't entrust your life's work to just anyone."