Westpac: Culture eats category for breakfast

This case study looks at a campaign from Westpac, the Australian bank, that embraced brave spoof marketing: offering free cash to anyone, in order to get young people to start considering banking with them.

Westpac: Culture eats category for breakfast

Executive Summary

'I'd rather go to the Dentist that talk to a bank' - Youths' damning view of the category prompted Westpac to change. They embraced a culturally redefining campaign that co-opted their fancy new 'Get Cash' technology… created spoof marketing…to play with a national ATM network…to hand out cash...for free…to pretty much anyone who wanted some…©…not very bank like!

Changing the bank's cultural norms enabled a bold and experimental approach which delivered an extraordinary ROI and outshone the performance of category giant CBA. More importantly redefining the way Westpac operates spawned a new...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands