CommBank launches ‘One Hundred Years Together’ campaign via Goodby Silverstein
Commonwealth Bank has announced details of its campaign to celebrate its Centenary year and highlight its integral role in the history and progress of Australia over the last century.
The extensive integrated campaign, entitled ‘One Hundred Years Together’, will highlight what Commonwealth Bank, together with the people of Australia, have achieved in the past 100 years. Combining television, print and social media, the campaign, via US agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, will look to engage existing and prospective Commonwealth Bank customers in a conversation about the future of banking over the next 100 years.
These grand and incredibly stirring scenes are interspersed with highlights of what the bank has directly contributed in the past century. We see the women move into the classroom, where she teaches students in the 1950s about the importance of saving, she drives through the quiet streets of the 1970s waving at families in their newly settled homes, she watches a child swing from a Hills Hoist, she retrieves a ball during a backyard cricket game. The fluid style and clever narrative allows the woman to swiftly and believably move through the chronicles of Australia’s past in a remarkable feat of advertising filmmaking.
Says Commonwealth Bank chief marketing & online officer, Andy Lark: “As Australia’s favourite bank we’ve played an integral role in the evolution of commerce and communities. Today we are celebrating that contribution and saying thanks to the millions of customers and thousands of employees – past and present – that have made this possible. What you see today is the huge sense of pride we have in being invited into our customers’ lives and in making a difference in their communities. And we are inviting them to join us on Facebook, Twitter and at our website to share their experiences and aspirations for the next 100 years.”
The creative will run across print, television and digital media starting on October 2. The television ads will air in 60 and 45 second slots from this date. Social channels will also complement the traditional media with a Facebook tab and Twitter launching soon after.
The dedicated Centenary website, developed by The White Agency, will also launch on October 2. Dedicated to the people, places and events that have formed the last one hundred years of Commonwealth Bank, the site will incorporate a combination of newly filmed content mixed with never before seen footage and stills from the extensive Bank archives.
Print ads supporting the TV campaign will launch across a range of titles nationally on October 23
Credits
Agency:
Goodby Silverstein & Partners
TV:
Director: Michael Spiccia
Executive Producer (TV): Chris Moore
Production (TV): Goodoil Films
Music/Audio: Song Zu (Sydney) and Beacon Street (LA)
Post Production: Fin Design (Australia)
Director of Photography: Russel Boyd (Oscar winning Australian)
Media:
Ikon
Digital:
The White Agency
21 Comments
One word, 3 letters.
what a wank.
What did they contribute to Don Bradman or the Hills Hoist?
Shit is a four-letter word, Mr Leo. Nicely polished shit, though.
Bank wank aside, thought this was very well made. It’s fukin stunning!
Were you there when the banks repossessed thousands of homes and farms?
You bet.
How unbelievably depressing.
Wow. Dullsville. I bet it was a big budget, and I’m seriously underwhelmed.
Boring boring boring.
The commonwealth bank advertising is the only memorable work on air for sometime, unless of course you prefer to remember the really bad stuff which the majority of ads are .
CB’s campaigns are consistent with look and tone. They are beautifully shot and executed.
Anyone who says other wise does not understand the business they are in.
My god . . . who are they kidding?
Bloody Seppos. It’s offensive on so many levels . . . Imagine the uproar if it was reversed . . . Independence, civil war, Babe ruth, fdr, bay of pigs, Carl Lewis and last but not least GFC!
The composites are work experience level at best . . . and that’s an insult to work experience.
100 years together*
*Except if you’re an australian ad agency in which case we fucked off years ago.
What a shame – big opportunity. Heartless result. Clumsy bad performance direction. Too much focus on visual effects that try and seduce you make for sloppy communication.
100 years of great aussies …. Lance Hill… oh thats funny .. made my weekend
Deeply, deeply appalling.
I am sorry but everything about this is just awful. The post is terrible, the actress looks like she is in a silent movie. The execution is so pedestrian. The music plods along, and you have no ending in sight. The VO is really weak and the read makes you feel sleepy rather than inspired. If you pause on each shot then the shots look quite nice, unfortunately there are 25 frames in each second so when they move they have to do something interesting.
Given the quality people involved, you have to ask whose fault was it. I think the Director has to take a good hard look at this piece of work and ask himself how did he squander such an opportunity.
The problem with this is what it’s saying.
Banks aren’t our fucking mates. And we don’t want them to be popping around to our house uninvited, sneaking through our garbage bins, or telling us they were on our side when we went to war.
No they weren’t. Filthy money-grubbing pricks were rubbing their hands, sniggering and playing the war bonds market. Same with the fires – you gave out loans, not insurance. Jackpot.
So given the idiot client thinks Aussies want to be friends with banks and engage with them (read: FUCK NO), this ad is like Fabio walking into an outback pub with his pink Maserati parked out the front.
ouch. reads like a few people on this blog pitched and didn’t get? (and i am in no way involved in this project).
It really begs dismay and invites indifference to the bank.
If the bank has such a shallow duty of custodianship of their own brand, can they be trusted to offer any depth of quality service to their clients?
This is the advertising equvilance of a junk bond or toxic instrument like a CDO.
The haters here are justified in their opinions.
The question is whether any local shop could have done better with such a client.
What is the strategy? To drive like-ability of the brand? It is more likely to make it seem old fashioned. Who in their right mind thinks customers are going to go and spend time on the dedicated micro- site? No-one gives a shit. They couldn’t even get enough people to click ‘like’ on their Facebook page when they were giving away $ to charity a few months ago. An example of a deluded client that thinks that the public is as interested in their brand as they are. They are NOT. Check your tracking – they border on hating you / the category.
It’s because the bitter individuals (like the ones that post here) also work in Oz.
Good job.
What a let down. I would have died to get the chance to make something on this scale, as would many of my peers. And what have they made? Poorly produced, horribly acted, woefully posted, soulless trite dogshit.
I wish the only problem with it was that it was written in America, but the responsibility for this travesty is squarely on the filmmaker’s shoulders.