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Campaign Imminent: Bank of the West taps PR, social AOR to promote sustanability efforts amid digital display ad spend increase (Score 42)

Backbone Media to raise awareness of the company's environmental efforts. The agency will provide PR, social media management and association marketing assistance. BW differentiates itself from other banks by working to help build a sustainable future via restrictions of the financing of fossil fuels, big tobacco, palm oil and other activities harmful to the Earth. BW reportedly has taken the strongest environmental stance of any other major US break. 

Effective April 2020, BW hired marketing strategy and operations VP and head Nathalie Shami, who was formerly Visa's client engagement, strategy and ops director.

In response to the global pandemic, BW encouraged users to utilize its mobile app; it also offered contactless purchases, a mobile banking tutorial, loan deferrals and investing advice. Branch visitations are still available via 30-minute appointments with bankers in order to practice social distancing. 

According to Adbeat's estimates, out of the $3.4m spent on digital display ads since June 2018, 85% ($2.9m) was spent after June 2019. It placed 46% of these as video ads through YouTube onto youtube.com. It placed 36% of these ads site direct onto sites such as sbnation.com, vox.com, theverge.com, curbed.com and polygon.com. Finally, it placed 18% of these ads programmatically through Google Display & Video 360 onto sites such as healthline.com, wikihow.com, medicalnewstoday.com, sickdeals.net and creditunionsonline.com. 

Neither iSpot nor Kantar report any additional spend information. 

BW's sustainability efforts probably make it very popular among environmentally minded Gen-Z, millennials and Gen-X; its increased digital display ad spend reinforces this standpoint.

Agency & martech readers - PR hires tend to lead to other agency reviews, especially under new leadership, so reach out soon to see if you can secure creative, media and/or digital analytics duties. CI&T has worked with BW on digital work in the past.