This is what you're looking at a little closer.
Now, this seems as though it is a slightly dangerous move on BNZ's behalf. It is certainly NOT something I would have recommended. Let's look at what's wrong with this:
- Underlining writing generally encourages people to click - this is an action that we have been trained up with using the internet - why would you underline your competitors?
- Eyeline typically goes top to bottom - why would you place your competitors at the top?
- WHY DO THE LINKS GO TO YOUR COMPETITORS SITES?? What? No. If you're going to do something like this, don't link to their sites! That would be 'driving potential customers away from your website'. If you're going to put your competition on your banner, for the love of all things good on online, create a temporary page which says "don't be silly - BNZ will look after you better" otherwise, you're using your advertising budget to help the competition
- I didn't even see the BNZ logo. Took me ages - might just be me... The bold blue colour is the only thing that draws my attention, I didn't think the bottom, what, 50 pixels (?) even belonged to that ad. It was completely lost into the background of the NBR website. Is this a case of creative vs. brand guidelines?
- This is not the medium to be clever with wording. Online is an instant medium, people look at a page online much quicker than they would if it were a physical newspaper. They are not going to spend the time actually taking in the fact that the point of the advertising is 'banking' vs. 'business'. People will see 'banking' then a list of 'banks' and then choose at will, not keep reading.
If there is anyone out there who happens to find out what kind of results this banner receives, I would be SO interested. I hope BNZ are at least tracking each possible click, see how much business they are driving to each of the other banks, perhaps they could invoice them? Advertising services rendered?
