ASB didn’t stop there. In a world-first, the bank secured week-long naming rights to Eden Park for the Bledisloe Cup game in October 2020 and gifted this to a Kiwi business in need of a helping hand. Anthem worked closely with ASB’s creative agency, WiTH Collective, to develop the creative concept to ensure it would lend itself to an effective media strategy we devised and executed. The campaign kicked off by strategically leaking the news to top tier national and sports media, creating a buzz around the naming rights announcement. With media personalities and the public debating who the business could be, Anthem planned and managed the media conference, while ASB’s Executive General Manager for Business Banking, Tim Deane, turned up at Coopers Catch, a Kaikoura fish and chip shop, to surprise the owners with the news of a lifetime – that they were the new naming rights sponsor of Eden Park.

Anthem developed a robust PR programme to maximise earned media opportunities. To kick off a week of media activity, we media trained Coopers Catch’s owners and flew them to Auckland, where Coopers Catch Park was announced to a crowd of tier one media.

Borrow Eden Park successfully drove a nationwide conversation, about the activation, ultimately achieving recognition for ASB against its objective: helping kickstart small businesses battling the economic impacts of COVID-19.

With a limited advertising budget, the communications results played a significant part in helping to achieve the business results. Thanks in large part to the widespread mainstream news, sports and consumer media coverage secured (88 stories), ASB achieved its highest Brand Love score on record, increased its Net Promoter Score first-place lead against the second-placed banking competitor and increased sales for Coopers Catch.

“Anthem brought creative thinking to the Borrow Eden Park activation, which strengthened the idea and led to strong results in terms of local and international media coverage. Anthem’s involvement and their connections
meant that the owners of Coopers Catch, Jason and Natasja Hill, spent the whole week talking to top tier news, consumer and lifestyle broadcast media. They started the week on primetime national news and continued dominating mainstream radio shows throughout the rest of the week. We’ve seen great feedback from our SME customers on the campaign, with many of them seeing and hearing about it through the media coverage.” – Tim Deane, EGM Business Banking, ASB Bank.

ASB Borrow Eden Park received a 2021 PRINZ  Gold Award for Best Use of Media Relations, and a 2021 PR Asia Gold Award in the Experiential PR category.