2021 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

OBJECTIVES
HomeEquity Bank (HEB) provides reverse mortgages to Canadians over 55. Their brand purpose is to give people the freedom to live retirement their way by retiring in the homes they love.

Zulu Alpha Kilo’s principal challenge was to continue to increase awareness and affinity for the brand during the COVID-19 crisis. By doing so, it hoped to improve consideration scores, which can be directly attributed to leads and, ultimately, sales of HEB’s core product, the CHIP reverse mortgage.

In order to achieve that, the agency created a branded content series aimed at educating and protecting Canadian seniors from an increase in fraudulent schemes resulting from the pandemic.

INSIGHT
During the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cases of financial fraud targeted at Canadian seniors increased significantly. As we were all forced to spend more time indoors because of the nationwide lockdown, criminals targeted seniors through telephone and online scams that were costing millions.

As a brand that works exclusively with seniors, it wanted to do something about it.

People were spending more time online – and it was commonly reported that social media and YouTube usage was going through the roof. Zulu noted that the popular educational company, Masterclass, had published a 100% increase in subscribers as people took the opportunity to learn new skills from leading experts in their field.

The agency felt it could get a message to the brand’s audience to warn and educate them about the dangers of the fraudulent schemes aimed at taking people’s hard-earned retirement income away from them.

In effect, it decided to teach them to beat the scammers at their own game, by show them how to master the Scam.

EXECUTION
Frank Abagnale is a former con man turned security consultant, most notably portrayed by Leo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can and best-selling author of Scam Me If You Can. The agency approached him to lead a masterclass in showing people how to protect themselves from criminal activity. It created a four-part series on the most common scams being used to defraud Canadian seniors.

The series included:
The Grandparent Scam – a scam based on a caller posing as someone you know and love: your grandkid.

The CRA Scam – It’s a scam caller posing as the Canada Revenue Agency, calling you to let you know you’re in deep trouble.

The Lottery Scam – The lottery scam leads you to believe that by a stroke of luck, you are now richer than you were yesterday.

The Romance Scam – Scammers get you to lower your guard through a steady diet of charm and dependency.

RESULTS
“Catch the Scam” generated significant top-tier broadcast and online media coverage across Canada and beyond with more than 35 million media impressions.

Frank W. Abagnale completed three interviews with Global News, BNN Bloomberg and Yahoo! News, resulting in national media attention. Additional coverage on CTV News, CP24, Strategy Magazine, Wealth Professional and others.

Credits

Client: HomeEquity Bank
Agency: Zulu Alpha Kilo
Chief Creative Officer: Zak Mroueh
Creative Director: Irfan Khan
ACD/Art Director: Kevin Sato
ACD/Writer: Vinay Parmar
Account Team: David Tremblay, Jenn Gaidola-Sobral
Strategy Team: Tim Hopkins, Sean Bell
Client: Yvonne Ziomecki, Vivianne Gauci, Erin Wilson, Niary Toodakian
Media: Iquanti
Media Team: Justin Lee & Yogesh Garbyal
Public Relations: Provident
PR Team: Morgan McLellan & Matt Roth
Production Company: Zulubot/Levelwing
Director: Mills Allison
Producers: Mitch Cappe, Kristina Loschiavo
Post Production: Zulubot
Executive Producer: Tom Evans
Editors: Ashlee Mitchell, Shiv Harrilal
Motion Graphics: Ashlee Mitchell
Colour: Felipe Chaparro
Audio: Noah Mroueh