Freshly Ground Insights (FGI) has surveyed the response to the latest FNB Street Smarts comic devised by Mamba Media. Printed fortnightly in the Daily Sun newspaper, research confirmed the efficacy of the educational comic strip.

The results showed a high Street Smart readership with 81% being Daily Sun readers and 86% being bank account holders.

The Street Smarts comic strip has been extremely well received by the Daily Sun reader, with 62% of respondents acknowledging reading the comic.

The primary motivation driving the readership of Street Smarts is its educative intrinsic nature. The majority of respondents (69%) indicated that they read the comic strip because it teaches them how to correctly use banking facilities.

From an advertising recall perspective, 99% of respondents identified FNB as the bank depicted in the comic strip, and there was a strong recollection of the benefits of an FNB Smart Account. A significant amount of respondents suggested that one or more of the benefits, such as the free R1 000 funeral cover and the ability to buy pre-paid electricity from the ATM, may be enough of a reason to switch accounts.

“We are very pleased with the results that FGI's market intelligence tests have produced,” says Andrew Kramer, Group Managing Director of Mamba Media. “The FNB Street Smarts comic strip has achieved what it set out to do and far more! Street Smarts endeavours to empower and educate consumers and that's exactly what it achieved, and will continue to do.”

Street Smarts is an ongoing comic series for FNB. The series highlights the financial institution’s SmartFuture initiative, addressing financial issues and specific new product benefits relevant to targeted readers.

Face-to-face market intelligence tests were conducted with a sample size of 470 respondents. This was proportionate to the Daily Sun's readership nationwide and the respondent profile comprised readers in the medium income bracket with a 45%-55% gender split with a male bias. The primary age profiled was 25-34, while the secondary was 18-24.