Spanish-based mid-sized
lender Banco Sabadell has launched a major ad campaign.
High-profile brand ambassador Pep Guardiola, manager of Barcelona
Football Club, is at the heart of the initiative. Rodrigo Amaral
discusses the campaign and its goals with Ramon Domenech, Banco
Sabadell’s head of marketing.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Banco Sabadell has established a strong reputation
among corporate clients – and now it wants to become a big player
in the retail sector too. The task is not an easy one in a very
competitive market that is going through a deep economic
downturn.
To achieve its goals,
Sabadell has launched an aggressive campaign to consolidate its
brand and has chosen Pep Guardiola, the head coach of Barcelona
Football Club, to become the new face of the bank.
It may sound like a smart
move; Spaniards are mad about football, and Barcelona is the
hottest football team in the world today. But it could be a risky
one too. Supporters of other teams, especially those who follow its
biggest rival, Real Madrid, could respond negatively to the leader
of its loathed rivals.
Barcelona, and by extension
its locally groomed coach, are also symbols of Catalonia and, in
many eyes, of the region’s dreams of independence. And nothing
divides Spaniards more than its various nationalisms.
How well do you really know your competitors?
Access the most comprehensive Company Profiles on the market, powered by GlobalData. Save hours of research. Gain competitive edge.
Thank you!
Your download email will arrive shortly
Not ready to buy yet? Download a free sample
We are confident about the unique quality of our Company Profiles. However, we want you to make the most beneficial decision for your business, so we offer a free sample that you can download by submitting the below form
By GlobalDataQuite a gamble then for
Sabadell, itself a Catalonia-based brand? Not really, according to
Ramon Domenech, the bank’s head of marketing. According to him, the
achievements of Pep Guardiola have been enough to overcome any
lingering resistance that other Spaniards could harbour against
him.
Domenech said that market
research has shown that Guardiola today represents for the public
many of the values with which Sabadell itself wants to be
associated.
“Sabadell enjoys a very good
image in the market, but it is very little known to the wider
public,” Domenech said.
In order to change this
situation, the bank had decided to launch a campaign focussed on
its image, rather than products, and stressing items like the
quality of service, professionalism, proximity to clients and
competitive products that the bank claims to offer. To do so, the
bank decided to look for a public figure that could credibly be
linked to such characteristics.
Up popped the name of
Guardiola, a man who looks unable to put a foot wrong. Ever since
he took charge of Barcelona, in 2008, Guardiola has been a huge
success and made fans all around the world.
Charismatic, intelligent and
handsome, Pep has also been a long time client of Sabadell, and he
was duly approached by the bank to be the face of the new campaign.
The Barça coach is not known, however, as a keen endorser of
advertisement campaigns. But Sabadell tried its luck anyway and in
the end it managed to convince Guardiola to be part of the
project.
The next step was to come up
with an idea for the campaign. The task was handled to SCPF, a
Barcelona-based agency which is part of the WPP group. The
creatives designed a multimedia campaign that revolved around
Guardiola’s work ethic and approach to life and work. It has been
developed on TV, newspapers, outdoors and, to a lesser extent, the
internet, and has attracted considerable media
attention.
For instance, an interview
with the Barça coach was written up and published in the form of a
double page advertisement in newspapers, guaranteeing extra
visibility for the campaign. Guardiola, contrary to his arch-rival
José Mourinho, rarely speaks to the media outside the obligatory
pre and post-match press conferences.
“The agency wrote the
interview based on conversations with him, but he asked to rewrite
it all over again,” Domenech said. “Not that we were
misinterpreting anything he said, but the original copy stressed
commercial aspects, whilst he wanted to give more emphasis to his
values. It was a good thing too. Because he rarely speaks to the
press, the interviews gained attention from the media and provided
the bank with some additional exposure.”
The TV spots, for their part,
play with the idea that people would like to have someone they can
trust and who could help them to tackle the challenges of their
daily lives. In the ads, Guardiola appears side by side with an
ordinary chap, coaching him at work and at home, pushing him to
work out harder when jogging in the park, and even animating the
man to answer one of those embarrassing questions that little
daughters are so keen to ask.
Football fans outside Spain
can barely imagine how bitter is the rivalry between the two
Spanish football giants. The roots of the rivalry go well beyond
football to include historical and political reasons. For a bank,
finding itself on the wrong side of the Real Madrid faithful might
sound like a dangerous idea. Madridians are believed to constitute
the largest group of supporters in the country, and Real is
historically the club embraced by the Castillan economic and
political elites.
“Yes, that was a concern for
us,” said Domenech. “Therefore, before the campaign was launched,
Sabadell performed a market research exercise, with emphasis on
Madrid-based focus groups. In the end, the bank concluded that the
achievements of Guardiola overcome any grudge that Madridians
harbour against all things Barça.
“The focus group in Madrid
gave results that were so positive that we concluded there were no
hurdles to pursuing the campaign,” he said.
“Guardiola’s name has truly transcended football to
represent seriousness and professionalism.”
