ING aimed to continue helping millennials gain more freedom. The aim is to connect with them and to become a social love brand. To achieve this, they needed a relevant and iconic proposal that would allow them to differentiate their image from that of other banks.

Millenials have known ING for the past 20 years; however, in the past few years, the sector has not connected as much with this audience. Moreover, they believe that banks don't understand them and don't speak the same language. In this context, ING aimed to become the most relevant brand for this target group on social media, trying to understand their interests and offering what they need to help them manage their finances more freely from their devices, where they spend most of their time.

Until now, the bank only used social media as the channel for financial education. And, although millennials say they want to improve their financial management skills, in reality, it’s not the kind of thing that helps them engage more with banks on social media. Why does this happen? We had a gut feeling: if your parents tell you that it's bad manners to ask someone how much they earn or to ask them how much money they have in the bank, wouldn't it be reasonable to say that you would be afraid to talk about your experiences and express your doubts? We might need to take a step back and free people from the taboo of talking about money, and then talk about it openly and in a way that arouses users’ interest.

To check whether our gut feeling was true, we conducted the study "Don't talk about money", using the results as content for the channels with the highest degree of penetration in the target, mainly on ING's Instagram account. This would allow us to see whether people don't like to talk about the subject and check how this affects the relationships with their families, partners and at work, and also how they manage their finances. All in all, we would create a space that gives voice to real people and where millennials can talk to their peers and openly, like no other bank had done before.

The study was conducted in collaboration with two partners specialising in market research, BigBand and El Departamento, using the surveys completed by 1000 people as the quantitative base and including interviews with 24 couples as the qualitative results. Most importantly, it confirmed that we were right: 58% of Spaniards don't like to talk about money.

The research revealed a significant number of findings. For example, one in four people do not share information about their finances, one in three admits to having a low financial literacy, more than half of the population struggles to make ends meet or barely gets by, and, when that happens, most prefer to tighten their belts rather than ask for money. This information and the statements of participants would help create content on ING's Instagram channel throughout the year. The content would also include the analysis of different experts, who will discuss that different psychological, sociological and financial factors have an impact on how we behave in relation to our finances.

It’s a disruptive, useful and relevant concept for millennials, giving real people the freedom to share their experiences regarding how they manage their finances. The content aims to drive conversations about money, to break with the taboo once and for all.

The campaign is monitored with an analytical model that is based on three pillars. The results of the pieces, audiences and formats are monitored daily with a dashboard to gain an overview of Instagram users. The campaign post-test is then implemented to analyse how people remember and perceive the content. Finally, it assessed the impact on millennials' brand perception. These four pillars can be used to perform a step-by-step validation of the activation and roll out a continuous improvement model according to how the audience behaves with each post.