A year after the brand played a major role in a meltdown that prompted a federal bailout and a worldwide economic downturn, Merrill Lynch and its bull are back, with a $20 million campaign offering consumers “help.”
Bank of America, Merrill Lynch’s new owner, is launching the campaign, themed “help2,” to reintroduce its newly acquired Merrill Lynch Wealth Management group.
The latter is BofA’s brokerage and wealth management division, which it purchased as part of its rescue of Merrill Lynch last September. Print,TV and online ads feature the classic Merrill bull—a mascot that was first introduced in 1974. The target: affluent Americans. Research, however, showed that their goals differed depending on age, which is why the campaign addresses different notions of help, said Claire Huang, head of marketing for BofA’s global wealth management, global banking and global markets units.
Younger consumers, for instance, were concerned about the economy’s impact on their finances, near- to-young boomers were preoccupied with retirement and older Americans were worried about inflation zapping their life’s savings, she said.
Hence, print ads that say “help2achieve,” “help2cherish,” “help2discover” and “help2begin.” As a marketing campaign, the superscript 2 refers to the one-on-one, personalized relationships financial advisors have with clients, their “exponentially better” advice and the combined distribution, scale and services offered by the two entities, Huang said. (The average Merrill Lynch client stays with his/her financial advisor for 13 years, she said.)
Merrill’s bull, “Dollar,” has also been updated. The mascot retains its classic blue coloring, in a new, white silhouette. There is also the BofA attribution below to reinforce the new relationship, Huang said.
(Interpublic Group’s Hill Holliday is the creative agency for the campaign. Starcom handles media buying duties.)
This week’s campaign marks the first time Dollar has been featured prominently in the ads. The mascot was not present in a summer campaign for the bank’s global corporate and investment banking business called Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
“The bull is alive and well,” and “He is on your side,” Huang quipped of Dollar’s return.
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