ASB Bank wanted us to promote their sponsorship of the ASB Classic, New Zealand's premier tennis event.

Trouble is, New Zealanders don't really like tennis, or banks.

New Zealand as a whole is pretty meh about the game with only 12% regularly following it, compared to 24% for cricket and 41% for rugby.

Bank advertising is famously intractable, with a huge amount of effort needed to move the needle even a little. We get excited with even 1 or 2% shifts, it’s that kind of market.

Our objectives however were:

Create at least +5% awareness in our reluctant 18-35 demographic

Get to 50 in our NPS, a height banks rarely achieve

Get our Brand Love metrics among Millennials at least up to the baseline for the rest of the population

Hit 80,000 interactions through all social elements of ASB

To celebrate ASB’s sponsorship of the ASB Tennis Classic and get more Kiwis interested in the event, ASB created the Sustainaball, a biodegradable tennis ball with a native seed inside.

A tennis ball that when lost in your backyard, plants a native tree.

Together, with ASB and 4design the Sustainaball gave the ASB Classic a modern-day makeover for ASB's target audience* (see confidential info)

Instead of talking about tennis, we turned our attention to something all Kiwis love - the humble tennis ball. Whether it’s bashed about in parks or co-opted for backyard cricket every house has got one.

Or used to have one. Because the thing Kiwis do with our tennis balls more than anything else is lose them.

So, we decided to do something about it by creating the ASB Sustainaball - the first biodegradable tennis ball, that plants a native tree.

Whilst a normal tennis ball can take 100s of years to breakdown, the Sustainaball breaks down in less than ten. Each ball was made of 100% wool, 95% natural rubber and contained seeds from native plant species in a water-soluble sticker, which can germinate under the right conditions as the ball biodegrades.

We launched with an online film, and at event execution of planting a sustainaball forrest.

AN UPLIFT IN AWARENESS OF 13% FOR 18-34s

(the largest increase among assessed segments, and 8% more than our target)

BRAND CONSIDERATION SCORE FOR 18-34s INCREASED BY 20%

(vs our target of 5%)

A BRAND LOVE INCREASE OF 7 POINTS AMONGST 18-34s

(our largest single month by month spike in over 5 years)

INCREASED SPONSORSHIP SCORE TO 76%

(of ‘ASB actively supports major events vs our target of 55%)

OVER 3M IMPRESSION & +25,000 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENTS

(PR reached 1 / 3 New Zealanders)