Ally Launches First-Ever Unified Ad Campaign

Ally has launched its first-ever unified brand campaign, aimed at highlighting the full scope of its financial services offered both to auto dealers and consumers.

“We felt it was important for people to understand the broader Ally story and all the things we do, especially since we’ve added a lot of new products and services,” says Andrea Riley, chief marketing officer for the digital financial-services company.

Ally traces its roots to General Motors’ defunct captive financial unit, GMAC, and at one point also served as the captive lender for the former Chrysler Corp.

But now Ally offers floorplan financing, retail lending and other assorted services to several  brands and has relationships with 17,000 new- and used-car dealers.

The “Do It Right” campaign ranges from national TV spots to online videos to print ads.  Some are humorous, others dealer and consumer testimonials. The campaign aims to support and unify the Ally brand (once divided into Ally Financial and Ally Bank) as the company expands and diversifies its offerings.

Ally recently has acquired online brokerage and wealth-management platform TradeKing, launched an Ally CashBack Credit Card and introduced Ally Premier Protection, an extended vehicle-service program for all makes and models.

Consumer advertising in the new campaign will focus on Premier Protection and retail-auto lending, Riley tells WardsAuto.

“We were a bifurcated business with auto focused on B-to-B and the bank focused on the consumer segment,” she says. “With ‘Do It Right,’ this is the first time we’ve had advertising that spans the B-to-B space and the consumer space.”

In its ad buying, Ally plans to take advantage of the upcoming college and professional football season as well as the major league baseball playoffs, what Riley as a marketer calls “live TV.”

“People tend not to DVR those live programs, watch them later and skip through the commercials,” she says. That selective, fast-forward viewing, is “a huge issue marketers face.” 

She adds: “We’ll be running all over the place to make sure we get a big push in the fourth quarter. This is a really important time in our company history.”

Ally considered 10 different prospective ad campaigns before deciding on “Do It Right,”

“We focused on what we want consumers and dealers to think and feel about our brand and how we’ve become that full-scale digital financial-services company and shifted away from the bifurcated business.

“It’s a big challenge to come up with something that would work across both B-to-B and the consumer space. We wanted to make consumers aware of what Ally has to offer as well as broadening our targets.”

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