The undercover ads that slot into, and don’t interrupt, your music listening experience

Integrated creative agency M+C Saatchi Abel, part of Africa’s largest independent group of creative companies The Up&Up Group, has partnered with Standard Bank to deliver The Undercover Ad campaign. It is an innovative, non-invasive example of advertising that utilises artificial intelligence (AI) technology to market Standard Bank’s app seamlessly on YouTube Music.

In an age where advertisements interrupt people’s music viewing and streaming experience on YouTube, M+C Saatchi Abel asked the brutally simple question: How do we market the Standard Bank app without interrupting YouTube Music users’ listening experience? The creative idea was The Undercover Ad – a campaign of AI-generated songs which are secretly advertisements that don’t sound like advertisements at all. “Instead of forcing our way in, we blended in, creating 17 genre-specific tracks – all generated from a single script – tailored to users’ playlists,” says M+C Saatchi Abel Executive Creative Director Rory MacRobert.

Standard Bank’s app is secure, fast and easy to use, and so the campaign needed to complement this. “As Standard Bank, we are committed to effective banking that blends into people’s lives seamlessly. Our primary business objective was to drive app awareness and downloads from a tech-savvy audience. The campaign therefore needed to represent banking that blends in, where technology meets culture,” says Susan Steward, Head of Marketing, Personal and Private Banking, Standard Bank SA.

The Up&Up Group’s Chief Creative Officer Neo Mashigo says the innovative campaign was a direct result of the group’s commitment to creativity. “As a group we believe that creativity elevates just about everything. And so, across the leadership of the Group, our commitment to diversity no doubt adds extra momentum in landing on creative outputs that continue to deliver tangible results for our clients.”

MacRobert explains that in this instance, tangible results went beyond awareness and downloads. A secondary goal, he says, was to shift brand perception. “The campaign is effective at positioning Standard Bank as an innovative, digitally fluent brand aligned with culture and user behaviour.”

Steward says it was important for the bank to communicate the value of the Standard Bank app in a way that feels native to the platform. “We wanted users to see, and experience Standard Bank, not as an interruptive advertiser, but as a brand that understands and respects the digital environment of users. Working closely with M+C Saatchi Abel, we have achieved this objective.”

The Up&Up Group’s Chief Executive Officer Jacques Burger says the group has a clearly defined approach to technology. “We are in the business of creativity. At the same time, we are living in the most extraordinary times where rapid advances in technology are allowing us to scale creativity, quickly. The Up&Up Group leverages technology and AI as platform drivers for creative excellence and innovative solutions.”

Zoning in on the campaign itself, MacRobert says it was designed to include all of South Africa’s demographics. “We targeted digitally fluent, music lovers who are mobile-first, ad-avoidant, culturally aware and skeptical of traditional marketing but open to innovation.”

MacRobert explains that the entire music production was AI-generated, using thousands of prompts to end up with the final 17 tracks to align with the top-played genres of music in South Africa, from Afrohouse and Amapiano to Country Rock. The result is that each track, or ad, was adapted visually and sonically to match the genre, for example, the standard financial services provider (FSP) disclaimer sung in reggae or jazz style, for example.

The results speak for themselves. The campaign impressions target was 10-million, yet to date it has already achieved 40-million+ impressions. The industry view-through rate benchmark is 15%, whereas the efficacy of the native approach has seen view-through rates of up to 40%. Other key performance indicators include:
- CPV: Target +