Zopa is taking on TV advertising, becoming the latest in a string of UK alternative finance platforms to launch a mainstream marketing campaign.

“Now, listen here. If you are dipped in super sensibility and a deeply smart cookie, sometimes you want to get extra money-coinage for something like a motor caravanny brrrm brrrm.”

Not, we suspect, the opening line that Zopa fans would have anticipated! The one minute advert continued on in much the same vein; a surprisingly traceable string of whimsical gibberish. The point?

“In a world of nonsense, a Zopa loan makes perfect sense.”

Professor Zopa’s major (salient) points were as follows:

“If you have an impressively tidy credit rating…”
“Zopa lends pound amounts from one grand thousand to twenty five thousands. Spiffinglorious.”
“At a Zopapetitive rate.”
We’re shown a tablet screen (a very deliberate medium of delivery!) offering a personal loan quote: 4.8% APR for £10k over 5 years.
“It’s all supersonically rapidy speedy to arrange. Two oh so simple steps for a quote and a joyfully instant decision.”
“And no despicable costings hidden all meanly. Oh no.”

It’s really a rather clever television debut. The ad manages to point the finger at any and all purveyors of nonsense in financial services, to create a TV persona around which to structure future ads, and to deliver a clear and light-hearted portrayal of the Zopa proposition for borrowers.

Note that last point. The ad is firmly targeted at borrower acquisition. Hence the complete absence of the “peer-to-peer” moniker. For as CEO Giles Andrews recently opined, the “P2P” tag is a useful tool for explaining the Zopa proposition to lenders – capturing something of the social aspect of the process. For borrowers, however, peer-to-peer has the potential to muddy the waters – especially given that the borrower-facing product looks much the same as standard variants of loan.

Zopa probably feels pretty comfortable on the lender front at present. The platform boasts a healthy base of private investors and is fielding a fair amount of institutional capital, including money from Metro Bank. And now the platform has to ready itself for the advent of P2P ISAs in April 2016. It’s no coincidence, we’d suggest, that Zopa hit our TV screens just two days prior to the arrival of the “Innovative Finance ISA”. More quality borrowers will be needed, and Zopa is on the warpath.

You can watch the new Zopa ad below. We’ve also provided a brief summary of the boldest and best of the mass marketing efforts within the UK alternative finance space to date.

Zopa