It's a bit like the Truman Show, if Truman were Australian and had an ATM in his house that broadcast his bank transactions.
As part of a new marketing campaign to get people to use social networks to sign up for accounts and interact with the bank, National Australia Bank has taken to Twitter to attract users to register to "win" a home cash machine that will be installed in a wall in the consumer's living room (or "lounge" as they're called in Australia).
The person picked will also get a preloaded bank account of about $1,500, an iPad 2 and an iPhone 4 (NAB's also heavily pushing new mobile banking apps). Another prize, or catch depending on your predisposition, includes the winner having his or her use of the ATM and other activities videotaped securely (without exposing sensitive info), and broadcast online.
NAB has used social media for a number of unusual marketing campaigns in the past couple of months, including a "break up" campaign that used a micro-site and social media to attack its rivals over mortgage interest rates -- a campaign it claims helped it grow its share of the national mortgage market by one percent in a few weeks.
It also embarked on an "honesty experiment" to promote credit cards by posting a series of videos on YouTube in which actors test the honesty of people on the street by dropping cash on the sidewalk or giving them too much change after making purchases a store.
