Our communication goals were threefold: To drive awareness of NatWest as a provider in a low interest market; to increase consumer understanding of a complex product; and to drive enquiries. These highlighted three key media imperatives, which the campaign needed to deliver against: Impact, to drive awareness and interest; breadth, to allow consumer engagement and understanding; a Direct Response element to drive enquiries.

The traditional approach to mortgage advertising is fractional spaces with a rate in the corner. This is low involvement advertising for a low interest sector. There are up to 50 ads of this type a week in the Daily Mail alone. MediaCom decided that NatWest needed to create high involvement advertising to cut through this clutter. The question was how? Firstly by briefing media owners to deliver press opportunities that allowed us to talk in their language to their audiences; secondly by making these opportunities both interactive and surprising. The whole idea was owned by the team at MediaCom.

Two reasons: The campaign represents a wholesale change of approach to press for both NatWest and the mortgage market; secondly we have two excellent sets of results.

The campaign as a whole doubled weekly application volumes, and the press activity was three times as responsive as traditional norms. We also conducted research into our biggest vehicle to drive increased accountability. Highlights of the impressive results include: 45.3% of Telegraph readers recalled our activity (how many mortgage providers can claim that?); 43% found it very or fairly useful; and 34% of readers felt they understood the way in which the account worked.