Apple South Applebee’s

Bank Caroline

Impressions Media Services began working with Apple South on a trial basis, planning and buying broadcast in the Louisville market in 1991.  We proved our ability to negotiate better rates and cost per points than they had been getting.  The original market list numbered 9, and the budget was below $500,000.

The client loved spot television and wanted to use it everywhere.  Building sales was the primary objective and spot television is the fastest and most cost-effective vehicle to accomplish that.

However, we did a market analysis and proved that all of their markets were not penetrated sufficiently to produce a sales ROI from a spot television campaign.  We recommended radio and other media in those under-developed markets, and were able to increase sales and brand awareness at a much lower cost.

We developed a Grand Opening advertising template that proved to be successful for every new store, bringing opening sales to new heights.  It became a challenge to beat our own numbers.

By the time Apple South decided to divest themselves, we were handling about 240 stores in 45 markets and the budget was $11 million.

Bank Caroline

In September 1999, BankCaroLine.com, an Internet-only bank, went active online.  The goal of BankCaroLine was to become competitive and surpass the account activity of competitive internet-only banks such as Netbank, Telebank, and Wingspan.  Because of available information regarding the internal structure and goals of Netbank, Netbank’s performance was used as a benchmark for judging the success or failure of Bank CaroLine.

Only Internet advertising was utilized.  Based on information and research from Nielsen Net Ratings and Media Metrix, Internet websites were chosen based on number of visitors per month.  Financial sites were selected based on content and popularity in the category and recommendations from the marketing team.

Banners were placed according to site content and visitor demographics that were available.  Different banners offering different products were run on varying sites.  Not all banners ran on all sites.

Impressions Media Services established a proprietary and confidential database as a means of measuring the effectiveness of each banner within each website.  Each week, the performance of every site was evaluated in terms of click-throughs generated.  Banners were switched to test which products generated the most clickthroughs.  As the schedule progressed, sites that did not perform well were dropped and other sites were added.  Due to the nature of this “new medium” at the time, the site selection strategy was based on trial and error.

As click-through and account activity was evaluated, it became increasingly evident that the entire Internet banking industry was rate-driven.  It also became quite clear that financial sites produced the most click-throughs.  Banner advertising eventually became limited to financial sites targeting investors interested in high CD rates.

With regards to the comparative success of Bank CaroLine to that of NetBank, Bank CaroLine far exceeded the number of accounts and deposits obtained by NetBank in a similar period of time, and at a much, much lower cost per account.  Here is a comparison of NetBank to Bank CaroLine at the end of the first four months of online activity:

                                      NetBank                  Bank CaroLine

Number of Accounts:           441                        1,820

Total Deposits:                   $1.5 Mil.                  $73.3 Mil.

*Estimated Expenditure:       $196,000                 $225,300

Avg. Cost Per Account:        $444                      $124

*NetBank expenditure estimated based on competitive spending reports for reported media (newspaper).  No Internet advertising reported.