The challenge
A large group of Dutch people struggle to recognise fraud, while communication about it remains too complex. More than 2.5 million Dutch people have difficulty reading. For them, a warning they don’t understand is no warning at all.
The brief
ABN AMRO and HAGENS jointly selected four themes on which the bank builds visibility. One of them is Fraud & Safe Banking. The goal: thought leadership on that theme, alignment with the bank’s ATL and BTL campaigns, and visibility in LLMs.
The strategy
The knowledge is in the organisation
Every six months, HAGENS brings ABN AMRO’s fraud experts, marketers and spokespeople together in a workshop. There, we gather input for several PR campaigns and filter out the topics with the most PR potential. In that workshop came the insight that fraud communication fails to reach precisely the people who are most vulnerable.
The creation
The Fraud ABC
The answer became the Fraud ABC (Oplichting ABC): an accessible fraud guide written at A2 language level. The principle: radically simplify financial information, so that fraud becomes recognisable and open to discussion.
The approach
A strategic press approach was the starting point. The campaign was then rolled out widely via ABN AMRO’s social media channels, website and newsletters, and translated into video content for shared media.
The impact
From PR tool to everyday tool
The free publicity approach generated more than 20 publications, with a reach of more than 20 million. But the ABC’s influence went beyond media attention. More than 200 financial care coaches actively hand out the guide and use it in personal conversations to help customers recognise fraud sooner. That is how a PR tool became a lasting tool for financial education.
20+
Publications
through free publicity
20+ MLN
Reach
200+
Care coaches
actively hand out the guide
Internally
The workshop from which the ABC emerged has become so popular within ABN AMRO that more and more employees ask to join. That way we gather all the relevant knowledge from the organisation, and more and more colleagues get to know the approach.
