Iceland Goes Dutch

The success of ING Australia’s Billy Connolly brand awareness campaign has spread to Europe with Icelandic bank Kaupthing enlisting the services of another eccentric Brit, John Cleese.

ING Australia told burningpants its Billy Connolly campaign resulted in a staggering jump in brand awareness among consumers, so much so that it is the most successful campaign ever by the giant Dutch bank globally.

While Kaupthing’s assets may be dwarfed by its Netherlands neighbour worldwide, the Reykjavík-based bank is no slouch.

Despite being headquartered on the small Nordic Island of 300,000 people Kaupthing has €49 billion in assets, operates in ten countries and employs 2,500 people with 36 retail branches across Iceland.

What both banks have in common is a campaign to raise their respective profiles by taking a slightly left-field approach.

Kaupthing may be on track to experience the same notoriety as ING did in Australia, albeit on a much smaller scale according to the words of Cleese himself.

In one of the three ads running, Spanish-waiter beating Cleese suggests that given there are only 300,000 people on the small Nordic Island perhaps the bank would have greater success by personally calling each of its inhabitants on the telephone.

The bank was formed by the merger of Kaupthing and Búnaðarbanki Íslands in 2003 and is the largest bank in Iceland.

The campaign involving Cleese is due to a series of minor names changes the bank has undertaken over the past few years.

The bank is known as Kaupthing Bank outside of Iceland, but inside the small island nation its official name is Kaupþing Banki hf.

Previously, its official name was Kaupþing Búnaðarbanki hf., however the name was changed after the former name was deemed too long for most people.

From 2003 to 2006 the company used the name KB banki for its retail operations in Iceland.

At the end of last year however, the bank reverted to using the old name of Kaupþing for its network of high-street banks.