Starling Bank results fly high through use of AR

Starling Bank is one of the UK’s leading digital challenger banks. Through a mobile-only
service, Starling aims to make banking straightforward by giving people the confidence and
power they need to feel in control of their finances. In 2019, they accelerated their marketing strategy to spread this message and grow the number of people opening accounts.

After seeing success through running Snap Ads and Story Ads on the platform, they collaborated with Snapchat to develop an AR Lens experience which brought their first ever TV campaign to life and delivered exceptional results. They partnered with Snapchat to leverage the platform’s highly engaged and unique audience in order to acquire new users and drive brand awareness.

Starling first leveraged the platform to run a Snap Ad campaign which optimised towards App Purchases. The campaign proved to be an efficient and scalable way to drive paid app installs amongst Snapchatters between the ages of 18-34 years old. This led to a 61% lower cost per install for Starling compared to other platforms.

Following on from this success, Starling utilized Snapchat’s world class AR technology to create a bespoke Lens experience as part of their brand awareness campaign. The Starling brand, which strives to be fast, adaptable, sociable and friendly, is all about empowering people to feel confident and in control of their finances. With this in mind, Snapchat created a Lens which provided Snapchatters with a unique opportunity to interact with the brand and become a part of that message. When opened to the face, the Lens brought the murmuration of starlings featured in the TV campaign to life around the head of the user. Once the camera flipped, a detailed augmentation of the birds were detected across the sky, before eventually forming the Starling logo. Alongside the Lens, they also ran Commercials, Snap Ads and Story Ads as part of the brand awareness campaign, which yielded incredible engagement with Snap’s unique audience. 

As a result of Starling’s multi ad product strategy, the campaign delivered a 7 point increase in brand awareness, a 12 point increase in ad awareness and 6 point increase in message association as measured through a Kantar Brand Lift study. By the end of the campaign, Starling hit an impressive milestone and opened their 1 millionth bank account.