American Marketing Association Honors Bank Iowa with 9 Marketing Awards

Bank Iowa is celebrating nine marketing awards received from the American Marketing Association’s Iowa Chapter, including the People’s Choice Award for its Let’s Make it Happen campaign. Since 2018, the four-person marketing team has been awarded 35 times for excellence in marketing achievement.

“These accolades are incredibly humbling,” said Josh Fleming, Bank Iowa’s VP of marketing. “When you have 275 team members that consistently keep marketing’s promises, and a dedicated team of marketing professionals working to make the better lives of our clients, community and culture, great things happen.”

Over the past three years, Bank Iowa has seen significant growth with asset size increasing more than 30 percent from $1.3 billion in 2017 to a record-high $1.7 billion in 2020.

Seven campaigns were awarded a top-three finish in eight distinct categories.

Bank Iowa’s Virtual Easter Egg Hunt placed first in the Digital category and second in the Website category. As communities across Bank Iowa’s footprint began to cancel their annual Easter egg hunts due to COVID-19, the bank stepped up to provide an opportunity to hunt for eggs virtually on the Bank Iowa website, which launched in 2019. The campaign increased web traffic for the bank by 30 percent, likes on Facebook by 479 percent and achieved an equivalent ad value of $12,000 in PR ROI. Winners of the virtual Easter egg hunt received flowers from Bank Iowa’s floral shop clients across the state.

This year’s People’s Choice Award was awarded to Bank Iowa’s branding campaign, Let’s Make it Happen. The week prior and day of the event, Iowa marketers were encouraged to vote for their favorite marketing campaign. The decision came down to five campaigns, two of which were represented by Bank Iowa.

The Let’s Make it Happen campaign placed second place in the Branding category. With a goal of differentiating the Bank Iowa brand, the marketing team created a unique brand position campaign that communicated the bank’s expertise to the intended audiences while driving traffic and engagement. The campaign increased consumer brand awareness by 3 percent, garnered 15,024 visits to website landing pages and averaged 14,000 views per commercial on all social channels.

Also placing second was the Bank Iowa Summit event. The Special Event nomination focused on bringing team members across a widespread geographic footprint together for an annual in-person event. The goal of the event was to increase attendance at internal events and increase overall company engagement.

Bank Iowa also won third place awards in Advertising, Public Relations, Integrated Communications and Non-Profit categories.