Case study: KNOW YOUR MONEY (NOW KNOWN AS NERDWALLET)

At the start of 2019, price comparison website Know Your Money (KYM) was preparing to launch a new campaign. It wanted to get the UK talking about debt; it’s still something of a taboo topic, but KYM was ready to tackle this head on and, in doing so, the business wanted to educate consumers about both good and bad forms of debt, and how to manage it responsibly.

City Road Comms came on board to help KYM to supercharge their campaign. Rather than just push out some general rhetoric and hyperbole about when people should or should not take on debt, we worked with KYM to ensure they had some real clout behind its ‘We Need To Talk About Debt’ campaign

How did we do this? Firstly, we commissioned original quantitative research for the company — we helped to run an independent survey of more than 2,000 UK adults, asking them about the types of debt they have, the attitudes towards debt in general, and the stigma surrounding the subject. To create a topical news hook, we also explored the headline-dominating Brexit issue within the context of debt; namely, by investigating how the upcoming political transition is affecting people’s concerns about money.

The findings were illuminating; they underlined just how many people in the UK feel out of control of their debt, and the repercussions this is having on their health and their relationships. In essence, the research proved exactly what KYM wanted: that there needs to be greater education about debt and how it can be managed safely.

KYM created a new section on its website all about the research (take a look here). Meanwhile, the City Road Comms team took our interesting survey findings and we broke down the data to see how people’s data troubles varied based on their age, gender and whereabouts in the country they lived.

We then created a vast number of press releases on behalf of KYM, which were distributed to national newspapers, local news outlets and personal finance websites. We also secured articles for the company’s director.