SOTTTSDALE, Ariz.–Zelle, the P2P response by big financial institutions–including credit unions–to the competitive threat from Venmo, has introduced its first marketing effort.
Targeting consumers 18 to 54, the new campaign theme is "This Is How Money Moves," and it includes music, rhyming, spoken word and lots of purple (a color that couldn't be tied back to one specific financial institution), according to Ad Age.
The quirky ads also use rhyming couplets for phrases like, "Your friend has a different bank? No sweat, Zelle makes it easy to safely pay your debt," and "Owe a friend? Quickly send."
CO-OP Network, along with JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Fiserv are among those that are backing Zelle as a means of creating a foothold in person-to-person payments.
"Zelle is bigger than the sum of its parts, so we needed a narrative that sat above everything," Jeff Brooks, president of the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based ad agency Huge told Ad Age.
The campaign, on which double-digit millions of dollars are being spent, according to the agency, will be digital only in Q4, and then in January will expand to include national TV, national print, out-of-home ads in 14 markets, and some sponsorships.
Much of next year's marketing, particularly the portion around spoken word, will include celebrity Daveed Diggs, the actor and singer of "Hamilton" fame, Ad Age reported.
The media effort is specifically targeting older consumers, between 35 and 54 years old, who might have been wary of using a digital payment provider such as Paypal or Venmo but could be swayed by a bank or credit union they trust.
Early Warning Services, which provides payment services to Zelle, reported that during 2016 the network saw more than $170 million P2P payments totaling $55 billion in aggregate transaction volume.
One of the digital videos for Zelle can be found here.