As New Zealand’s largest home lender, ANZ Bank needed to elicit a behavioural change response among Kiwi homeowners. To tackle the nationwide problem of cold, damp, unhealthy homes, we needed Kiwis to enquire about ANZ Bank’s Healthy Homes Initiative - offering interest free loans for insulation. To elicit that response, our creative solution needed to captivate Kiwis, compelling them to visit our website and learn more about the issue.

50% of Kiwi homes are too cold and damp, falling below World Health Organisation standards for a healthy home. As a result, 1 in 6 Kiwis suffer from respiratory diseases, especially children. New Zealand’s largest home lender, ANZ bank made a commitment to help Kiwis live in warmer, drier homes. Our brief was to get Kiwis to enquire about ANZ Bank’s Healthy Homes Initiative - which offered interest-free loans for home insulation and heating. Faced with a culture of Kiwis used to ‘toughing it out’ over winter, our solution needed to captivate and educate Kiwis. So that households would care about the problem, and do something about it with help from ANZ.

Mr Humfreez by ANZ is a 100% sustainable device that shows you when your home is too damp, or too cold. His hygroscopic horns uncurl when humidity is over 65%, and thermochromic ink on his face turns blue below 18ºC. Instead of using plastics and rare earth metals, the technology was created by calibrating and coding one of earth’s most abundant materials - wood. A smart, sustainable and unmistakably Kiwi icon of home health, Mr Humfreez forms the centrepiece of ANZ’s Healthy Homes initiative.

We turned the ANZ Healthy Homes Package into the emotional heart of our entire home loans proposition. In a competitive home loans market that was in a rate-race to the bottom, we focused on adding value to homes, not taking value away from a home loan. We aimed to show Kiwis the health of the home in a way that made them care about this issue. So we created a sustainable device that sparked healthy conversations, and unashamedly looked great in your home. We discovered the gatekeepers to a healthy home are young mums, as children are the ones most affected by damp, cold homes. Our solution was aimed at educating children and young families. We gave children a voice in our communication, used the family home as the context for our message, and empowered both teachers and children through a pilot learning module in a primary school.

In the run up to winter, Mr Humfreez by ANZ was launched with a nationwide direct response driven integrated campaign, using media strategy to expose our message to those people most likely to care, talk and act. Our campaign ran across TV, OOH, Digital, Social, and owned channels making Mr Humfreez available to customers, encouraging Kiwis to visit our website where they could register for our smart sheep and our interest-free loans for insulation and heating. Recognising that paid media can only achieve so much, Mr Humfreez made appearances in leading national talk shows, breakfast TV and radio programs. Sign ups were encouraged across every channel- paid, owned and earned. We also prioritised environments like schools where our devices could be seen and engaged with by many, to ensure our message spread beyond households that just got one in their home.

• Mr Humfreez broke benchmarks, driving 5X more search volume than any other ANZ campaign.

• We received over 50,000 registrations during the campaign.

• Mass production is underway in phase 2 due to global demand.

• Humfreez is now being trialled as a teaching tool to become part of the NZ school curriculum.

• Over 3X more Kiwis now associate ANZ with Healthy Homes than any other bank.

Government agencies and NGOs have reached out to seek potential partnership opportunities - including Housing NZ, EECA (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority), The Asthma & Respiratory Foundation and Habitat for Humanity.

• Healthy Homes eDM to existing customers delivered industry-leading results: 52% opened, 9% clicked; 4% forwarded.

• 94% positive social media sentiment during the campaign. Incredible for ANZ bank at a time of significant reputational challenges in New Zealand and Australia.