Paze ramps up marketing with NBA Finals ad

• Key insights: Paze solicited actors Elizabeth Banks and Gabrielle Union for its second national advertising campaign, which will air on connected TV, social media and Game 1 of the NBA Finals tonight. 
• What's at stake: The online checkout tool is hoping to link itself with financial institutions in the public eye as it attempts to build brand awareness. 
• Forward look: By the end of the year, Paze hopes that one in three consumers will have strong brand awareness for the digital wallet. 

The stakes are high in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, and the players aren't the only ones with skin in the game.

Between whistles, Early Warning Services' online checkout tool Paze is hoping its second national ad campaign, which solicited actors Elizabeth Banks and Gabrielle Union, will catch millions of eyes as the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs duke it out for an early advantage in what is promising to be one of the most-watched finals in recent memory. 

The goal is to establish a connection between Paze and financial institutions to build trust so that consumers use the service, Serge Elkiner, general manager of Paze, told American Banker. 

"Why is Zelle so successful? It's because it's within your bank app," Elkiner said. "This link between Zelle and the bank is so important. I need people to know that Paze is from my bank and credit union." 

One of the biggest challenges banks face is building awareness for its products and services, Josh Mabus, CEO of the Mabus Agency, told American Banker. 

"It's important for banks to realize the importance of simple, paid awareness," Mabus said. "All of us in banking know how all of this works, but the general consumer doesn't. … You cannot have adoption of a product like Paze or core banking if awareness of the service or product or institution doesn't exist." 

The spot leans on the wordplay of the two actors' last names – Banks and Union – to drive home its message that Paze is a product connected to consumers' bank or credit union. 

"That's why the creative was so amazing, it's like they represent the brand, but then their last name, Banks and Union, is really what represents the product," Elkiner said. 

The campaign was a year in the making, Elkiner said, and marks the first advertising campaign that includes its seven bank owners and Citi, which started supporting the checkout tool in March. 

The banks will also be promoting Paze through their respective banking apps, as well. 

"In the product in the next three to six months, you will see a lot of indications that it belongs to the banks, because there's going to be a lot of tie-ins with the banking apps," Elkiner said. 

Banks, credit unions and payments companies have a long history of soliciting star power to spread awareness of their products. PayPal has enlisted Will Farrell as its spokesperson, Block has used Timothée Chalamet and Serena Williams to promote Cash App, and CapitalOne has a roster of celebrities, including Jennifer Garner and Eugene and Sara Levy, that push its credit cards and retail automotive tools. 

"Celebrities are a shortcut to trust and association," Tyler Reed, founder and CEO of Bizwrite Digital PR, told American Banker. "Literally with people's wallets, earning that trust is going to be a tall order. By bringing in familiar, trusted faces (even when most of what they're known for is the roles they play on TV), Paze is instantly borrowing culture cred." 

Banks also have a long history of using sports to push brand awareness and build loyalty and trust with consumers. Northwest Federal Credit Union holds naming rights to the stadium that the NFL's Washington Commanders play at, Chime is the jersey patch partner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks (similarly, Paze is the patch sponsor for the Atlanta Hawks basketball team) and Ally Financial has been reaping the benefits of its investment in women's sports.

Those sponsorships come at a premium, though. Full-minute spots during Game 1 of the NBA Finals can run anywhere between $1 million and $2 million, according to Reed, depending on their placement and the network's advertising packages. Thirty-second spots, like the one Paze is running, would cost less.  

"The Super Bowl is still the king of live sporting events, but the NBA Finals is right up there as a solid Tier 1, especially if you want to reach a highly engaged, digital native audience," Reed said. "People watch the Finals live as they happen with their friends, phones in hand, which is exactly where a digital wallet brand wants to be."

For Paze, sports and the NBA represent important investments in building brand awareness. In addition to its sponsorship deal with the Atlanta Hawks, the company is also the official online checkout and digital wallet for Major League Soccer franchise NYFC and a founding partner of its forthcoming stadium, Etihad Park. 

Getting Paze out in front of customers is the next step to growing its brand, Elkiner said, now that the company has developed the product and increased its merchant distribution through partnerships with payment companies and technology resellers such as Fiserv, ACI Worldwide and Worldpay. 

"We're willing to go big or go home. … We're trying to get in the hundreds of millions of impressions in the next six months," Elkiner said, noting that by the end of December, Paze hopes that one in three people will recognize the brand. 

But Paze will need to do more than just link its brand to banks to really drive adoption of its wallet, Mabus said. 

"Early Warning really believes that's important, and the consumer does not care," Mabus said. "Look at the adoption of non-bank products. We've got to bring the consumer the benefit, and until we can explain banking as a benefit, the correlation to a bank, in and of itself, is just a feature."