Battle of the Mortgage Campaigns: TD vs BMO

Think of the best mortgage ad you’ve ever seen. I’m going to guess that not many images come to mind, unless you saw it here. There is a lot of money in the mortgage industry and you would think that Canadian banks would be investing a chunk of their advertising budget into stronger marketing campaigns.  According to Will Dunning, Chief Economist at the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals (CAAMP):

“Mortgage credit will continue to expand by about $80 billion (7.8 per cent) in 2011.”

Consider that the 5.7 million Canadian home owners represent a total outstanding mortgage principal of approximately $860 billion. Home Equity Lines of Credit (HELOCs) account for $220 billion. Therefore, the estimated combined debt total surpasses the $1 trillion mark. Why wouldn’t banks want to increase their visibility and tap further into this market?

In our series we will look and compare mortgage commercials/videos of some of the top banks in Canada. The banks will go head-to-head in a tournament to determine the winner of our novelty award, “Best Mortgage Ad Campaign”

Contenders

The Challenger in the blue corner: BMO Bank of Montreal from Montreal, Quebec

The Challenger in the red corner: TD Bank based out of Toronto, Ontario

Video Campaigns

TD Marketing theme: “Banking can be this comfortable”

“Mortgage Basics”

“Down Payment”

“Pre-approval”

BMO Marketing theme:

“BMO Homeowner ReadiLine”

Thoughts

TD:  There were actually eight sets of commercial ads made in this style, we just included three as to not overwhelm your server. We felt TD’s ads were effective mortgage education tools because the ads were built like a live FAQ section. In their videos, they covered all the common questions that new home buyers ask and explained them well without getting too lengthy. Clearly, TD is targeting first-time home buyers, which is a smart market to get into. According to the CAAMP 2011 spring report, first-time home buyers accounted for about half of every home sold in Canada in the past two years.

BMO:  This was the only bank that focused on their HELOC (Home-Equity-Line-of-Credit) and we’re glad they did, because the BMO ReadiLine is one of the best HELOCs available. What we loved about their ad was that they brought possibility to what you can do with a line of credit. Essentially, they are providing motivation for consumers by tying line-of-credit with personal dreams, such as owning a cottage, paying for a child’s college fund, or white water rafting. BMO makes the ReadiLine tangible to the consumer by opening up the possible uses of their money to something they can relate to.

Conclusion:

Now that they’ve “talked-the-talk”, can these banks “walk-the-walk”? Take a look at their current mortgage rates: