Discover, for the first time, launched a product other than a credit card in a mass-media campaign with the goal to grow its customer base beyond being “just” a credit card company. The campaign aimed to make the Peacock fly.

The Peacock was in reference to measured unaided awareness for the brand’s products of 2% in 2022. As it turns out, peacocks only fly 2% of the time, said Brittany Gelsomino, head of deposits growth and rewards at Discover, during a presentation at the MediaPost Performance Marketing Insider Summit.

It was one of the biggest launches the company ever had in terms of media, budget and support.

Awareness has been a challenge, Gelsomino said. That same year, aided awareness was less than 20%.

For those who don’t know, Discover is more than a credit-card company. It is a full-service bank, and that is Gelsomino’s challenge.

She said Discover offers it all, but “no one knows” it. Few consumers knew about the “game-changing cash-back debit card purchase” program that Discover offered for free, which gives cashback on purchases made daily. That had to change. 

Discover’s teams are siloed, which made it more difficult to cross media.

All brand-awareness campaigns, which typically were only for cards, ran on TV and radio. The company tried to reach younger and less affluent consumers with several spots.

One of the Especially for Everyone campaign spots featured celebrity Jennifer Coolidge, who sported an 80s hairstyle and played an air guitar. It launched November 12.

“Discover is accepted in virtually any place you want to use a card, but some who are not already our customers don’t know that,” Coolidge said in the TV spot, a theme that resonated with the theme.

Another spot showed Coolidge in a diner where she told Thomas how good a listener he is and that “you always make me feel so special.” She held up her Discover card before making a payment and said, “this makes me feel special, too, because Discover gives me cashback on debit, not just credit.” Discover gives cashback to everyone, Thomas told her.

Between the performance team focused on affiliate, search and social, and the media team intended to drive traffic to the site and reach a younger audience, some 90% of the budget went to a digital media mix, which ended up performing significantly better than the traditional 70% allocation.

“We sponsored Bad Bunny’s launch on YouTube,” Gelsomino said. “It was so funny seeing some of our executives saying, ‘Bad who? What — are you sure this is what we want to be doing?’”

There were a lot of firsts mentioned during Gelsomino’s presentation, including the first time Discover used a celebrity for the campaign, and the most spent on a campaign in one quarter.

The brand team stepped up to sell the idea and it paid off.

Brand ad performance for the campaign hit 17% brand recall in one month. It also reached 10 billion paid impressions in media — the most Discover has spent in one quarter. This campaign ran while slowly increasing those for its credit cards. The deposits sites alone saw an increase of 359% in visits.

Checking accounts grew 55% from 2023 to 2024, and more than 50% who opened checking accounts were new to Discover.

Capital One is acquiring Discover in a $35.3 billion all-stock transaction. The deal should close by early 2025, but it’s not clear what impact it will have on advertising and media.