The Challenge

Launching regional Australia’s largest community bank

The Ad Agency’s mission was to re-name and re-brand the Community Mutual Group (CMG), a $75M regionally based Credit Union, encompassing a large proportion of Regional NSW. CMG’s core mission was to move from credit union status to full service bank status, but at the same time maintain the core values that had driven sustainable growth over decades. We needed to create a name and a brand that regional Australians could relate to, ownership of and trust with their livelihoods. In essence, we needed to create a new name and own a space for this brand that no other financial institution in Australia could own.

The insight

We are genuinely local. More specifically, we are in fact, ‘Regional’

The descriptor ‘Regional’ is the one that resonates and matches our targets descriptions of themselves and that’s everyone outside our major metro cities. Hence, use of ‘Regional’ is powerful. It stood out strongly as the key feature that the participants felt that unified them all. The brand mission was to provide ‘real value’ bank services to the people of regional Australia and to show that they truly had a stake in their own bank.

RAB is now the largest regionally based financial institution in Australia.

The solution

Regional Australia Bank

Working alongside CMG key stakeholders it was decided to consolidate all of the credit unions sub-brands into one single entity and rename the brand to clearly position the group as a ‘Customer Owned Bank’. Following extensive market research and naming sessions it was decided to launch as the ‘Regional Australia Bank’ a name that instilled trust, credibility and standing with in the community. The Agency then set about ‘materialising’ this exciting new brand and bedding it down within the community and throughout the relevant communication channels.

Annual growth of 18% (against average growth of 3%).

The results

Growing a $2B non-profit, community focused, customer owned bank.

Over Eighteen years ago The Ad Agency began it’s journey with RAB, helping what was then a $75M credit union become the $2BN Community Bank it is today. The Ad Agency has been responsible for rebranding and relaunching this institution as ‘Regional Australia Bank’, a customer owned bank focused on regional Australian communities and values. Since the launch, their business share has grown at twice the rate of the industry average.