E*Trade may have outgrown its TV crib: the financial service’s most recent Super Bowl campaign featuring its iconic talking baby achieved only a minor consumer perception bump compared to most other years the campaign has run.
E*Trade has just parted ways with Grey, its ad agency which created the talking baby.
In every year of the campaign, except 2009 and this year, E*Trade made month-long leaps in consumer perception following the airing of each new set of Super Bowl ads, only to settle slowly back down to Earth.
E*Trade also experienced significant perception boosts in November of 2010, 2011 and 2012, reflecting new executions of the campaign for pre-holiday season.
E*Trade and the mass market financial services sector average were measured with YouGov BrandIndex’s Buzz score, which asks respondents: "If you've heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?" Results were screened for adults 18+.
For its first E*Trade talking baby campaign five years ago, the company’s Buzz score shot up 16 points from 1 to 17 from mid-December 2007 through the first week of March.
E*Trade hit its highest Buzz score peak in first quarter 2010, when its score rose from 6 on January 20th to 19 on March 7th. The Buzz score peaked at 18 the following year. Scores were never the same after that: in 2012, it took an 8-point ride from a Buzz score of 6 to 14 in the first quarter, but only rose from a 7 to 9 earlier this year.
Although the awareness numbers for E*Trade are lower this year, they still lead an average of their peers in consumer perception. E*Trade’s current Buzz score is 7, while the mass market financial services sector average is 4.