Bank Hapoalim - Network Rollout

The Middle East has been a hotbed for financial services digital signage networks lately (albeit mostly on a small scale) but Bank Hapoalim, Israel's largest consumer bank, maintains the largest. Starting nearly two years ago, the bank began a rollout of a comprehensive digital communications system to its 250 branches. According to a press release at the time, each location is now equipped with digital signs in four different zones--the teller counter, the business banking zone, the retail lending zone, and the personal banker zone--each showing a unique "channel." Content consists of 30% entertainment and 70% advertisements, as well as displaying customers' positions in queue (a clever "now serving" application), and a permanent Reuters information ticker on the bottom of the screen. Ad targeting is done generally on a regional basis, but also using attributes such as branch size, services available, and customer mix.

Note to bank marketers: Including news/stock price tickers on the bottom of the screen is a bizarre obsession of many network operators and, according to at least one test, an absolutely dismal idea. Results from a pilot I conducted on content effectiveness showed across-the-board declines in standard media measures (awareness, recall, etc.) for the "main" content displayed when tickers were present, likely a by-product of the increased visual clutter and distraction of customers who read the news instead of watching ads. Even forgetting the test for a moment, intuitively, if you want customers to watch your ads, why would you provide them with a competing alternative?!

As well as its use as a marketing vehicle, Hapoalim also uses its network to communicate to its staff before- and after-hours. Content is developed by the bank's internal marketing department, and the network is managed using C-nario's software application.

(Photos taken from C-nario website)