Bank of America, Charlotte, NC, is running its first major ethnic direct marketing campaign since acquiring NationsBank in 1998. The integrated campaign, which will use print, radio and TV, started earlier this month and is being directed primarily at the African-American, Hispanic and Asian markets.
“We waited this long because we are in the process of doing away with the NationsBank name and bringing everything under the Bank of America name,” said spokeswoman Juliet Don.
Bank of America will run parts of the campaign in Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese. Each group is targeted with different ads and commercials that they can directly relate to. For instance, the Asian portion of the campaign will talk about the concept of feng shui, the Chinese philosophy of living in harmony with one’s environment.
The ads direct customers and prospects to Bank of America’s Web site or to call its toll-free number. Print ads for each portion of the campaign will run in weekly and biweekly community-oriented newspapers for a total of 10 weeks.
Two separate print ads and two radio ads, which were created by UniWorld Group, New York, will target the African-American market. Two print ads and two TV spots, which were designed by Kang & Lee, New York, will target the Asian market. The ads began running on local radio and cable channels earlier this month. To reach the Hispanic market, Bank of America is using print, TV and radio ads that were created by Lopez Negrete, Houston. There will be two ads for each medium. The TV and radio spots began running last month, when the general campaign for Bank of America began, while the print ads began running last week.
“We didn’t use all three mediums to go after each market because our research showed that there were certain ways that were better than others to reach specific groups,” Don said.
