Monzo Tunes in to Its Target Audience

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What would you expect from a bank’s first ever global brand platform? Claims about standout features? Boasting about rates or deals? With its “Get busy living” campaign, digital bank Monzo has something bolder in mind. It’s looking to reinforce its edge over its competition with a campaign that puts the focus on the emotional benefit of banking.

It’s a simple idea. A bank like Monzo works hard for you in the background, taking care of business by making banking easier. The benefit? You can get on with living your life and enjoying the special moments no balance sheet can account for.

In this ad created with agency BBH London, we see a workman driving his van with his crew and singing his heart out to George Michael’s “Careless Whisper”. He’s not the most tuneful vocalist in the world but it doesn’t matter – he’s living his life the way he wants, and meanwhile Monzo is making sure his accounts are all synchronised. If your finances are in tune, so are you, the ad says, before the “Get busy living” tagline.

It’s an ad that puts across the feeling and experience of Monzo not by describing it but by making it vivid and real. When you have the financial confidence, tools, and frictionless experience that Monzo brings, you can prioritise the business of living. And it’s also charming and funny, with a classic 80s favourite to grab attention and build positive memories.

Monzo’s bravery in kicking aside the boring conventions of the banking category and focusing on feeling pays off in its Test Your Ad results. Among the general audience, the ad resonates strongly, landing in the top 4% of the banking category as a whole. That’s already an excellent result, and justifies Monzo’s emotional approach on its own. 

Test Your Ad Pro lets you test creative work among custom samples as well as benchmarking with the general population. So we also tested “Get busy living” with a sample reflecting Monzo’s target audience of small business owners. And with those viewers the ad was an even bigger hit, getting a maximum 5.9-Star Rating.

That isn’t because Monzo are using the ad to pitch specific features at this audience – the ad is firmly customer-focused, not product-oriented. But its slice-of-life approach captures the emotional benefit of Monzo so well that it resonates deeply with the bank’s audience.

An ad that hits the effectiveness bullseye with target customers while still being a top performer with a general audience? That’s an ideal result for a global brand campaign, and more proof that casting convention aside and putting emotion first can work wonders in even the most apparently functional sectors.