North America's campaign trail
i
F&A strategy
BusinessWeek
Cover story
IO What'sNewS Issue 8 December 2000
Irony, humour and just the right amount of expertise are key ingredi-
ents in North America's new ambitious ad campaign. Fashioning the
tag-line 'the financial link in the global food chain', a series of colourful,
creative and targeted advertisements has been launched in efforts to
secure RI's rightful place in the North American market - as the
leading food and agri bank. Highlighting our strengths -
commitment, top-level products and services, and of course, a
vast F&A knowledge base, this brain child of Bob Bucklin, New
York's senior vice president and chief corporate banking officer,
is taking off in a world-dass way.
Rabobank.The financial link
in the global food chain.
Rightful claim
Defining a personality
ad campaign is the latest tooi ro
■L carry out the strategy laid out in
1997, "Organizing for success'Y Bucklin
explains. The ambition set three years ago
was no easy task: to establish Rabobank
International as the pre-eminent F&A
bank in the US. The goal was to achieve a
ROS of 10% by 2000. In 1998, additional
criteria were set, based on a desire to oc-
cupy the number one spot in at least five
of the top 10 F&A sectors in North Amer
ica. A customer survey followed, which
asked clients to rate RI in terms of per-
ceived importance and role in their busi
ness. The study found that 88% of clients
ranked RI as one of their top three finan
cial institutions, and 38% considered RI
the most important bank in their relation-
ship. Now that we're in December of the
target year, we must ask, how
has it gone? Without exaggerating, one
could say better than expected. Not only
has the 10% ROS been achieved, it's been
Compliment! of R«bob«nk-t
t
exceeded quite considerably. Now running
at 17%, confidence is high and the larger
goal - demonstrating RI's top notch
knowledge and services in F&A - is well
on its way.
'While we've seen con-
siderable progress,
nothing was tying it all
together,' Bucklin ex
plains. 'RI is the best
bank in the food and
agribusiness - a posi-
tion that no other fi
nancial institution in
the US can claim.
While we were encour-
aged by positive feed
back from our cliënt
base, we feit we could
do more. In other words, it was time for
us to stake our claim.' The result was
what Bucklin likes to call 'taking the high
ground' - and beginning in early 1999,
discussions began with the international
ad agency, Doremus, to directly tackle the
issue of national awareness about RI.
With help and support from Marketing RI
in Utrecht, talks continued throughout the
year, and by early 2000, a distinctive cre
ative message was taking shape and an ul-
tirnate trip to the presses would soon be-
come a reality.
Doremus came up with the catchy and
smart tag-line, 'the financial link in the
New York's Bob Bucklin
Better than receiving the company
pen, the crown jewel of the ad cam
paign is a powerful marketing strategy
that literally puts RI on the cover of a
magazine. A free one-year subscription
to Business Week has been offered to a
select group of 1200 key-dccision mak
ers and influential parties in North
America's F&A market. Various CEOs,
CFOs, treasurers for clients and
I...IHIll.lt..
•imioe MMdt mi' T
Rabobank fa
.Tij.T— International
prospects, private investors in F&A
companies, and even compctitors, com-
pose the list of recipients. Once a
month, the magazine will arrivé with a
special cover-wrap that features an ad-
vertisement and information about the
uniquc strengths and capabilities of RI.
'We're communicating directly to the
people that should hear and think about
our strategy,' says Bucklin. 'Not only to
clients and prospects, but also to com-
petitors. We're letting them know that
RI is a bank to be reckoned with.' And
while one might think this tactic is
heavy on the wallet, in fact it's extremely
cost efficiënt. The cost for the five rotat-
ing cover-wraps (to appear on 13 issues)
plus the year's subscription is equal to
the cost of running a half page ad in the
national Wall Street Journal for one day.
