HSBC Singapore has always pushed the boundaries in showing its commitment to deliver customer-centric products and delivering pioneering innovation across digital, marketing, customer experience and product development.
At The Digital Banker’s 2nd annual Global Retail Banking Innovation Awards 2019 held recently, HSBC Singapore was declared, Winner in Outstanding Digital Marketing Initiative. Outshining prominent competition – the HSBC Visa Platinum Card relaunch campaign was a ground-breaker for HSBC. Not only did the campaign double applications for the card, it generated greater goodwill and affinity for the brand as a whole, with HSBC soaring to be the #1 recommended bank, beating out the big boys.
In a category obsessed with functional rewards, HSBC, a challenger brand, relaunched its HSBC Visa Platinum Credit Card (VPC) like no other, eschewing generic promotions and giving its target audience – Singaporean families with young kids, the gift of genuine quality time together.
Smallest yet mightiest influencers
To emotionalise and elevate VPC’s cash rebate benefits as the ultimate reward for parents – quality family time – HSBC needed to find the right voice and creative expression to carry its message and achieve its objectives. The bank tapped on the smallest yet mightiest influencers – kids. And connected with Singaporean parents through an authentic social experiment film, to remind parents to spend more quality family time together despite their busy schedules.
To spark heartfelt discussion and reflection, HSBC tugged at heart-strings via a social experiment film – posing the question, “What would you do if you have a day free?”
To spark heartfelt discussion and reflection, HSBC tugged at heart-strings via a social experiment film – posing the question, “What would you do if you have a day free?” to real parents and kids (no actors) separately. Through unscripted, unfiltered responses, they found a surprising contrast in responses. Whereas overworked, weary parents wanted to relax and unwind through spa visits or treats, kids just wanted more time with their parents. Acting as an enabler, HSBC got the families out, enjoying quality time together in restaurants, cinemas and other partner establishments. Tears of guilt turned into tears of joy in this day out together. Creatively, HSBC touched the heart – eliciting real confessions and emotions from kids and parents. And appealed to the mind as well – by showcasing the functional value of VPC.
Triple-A slam dunk for a challenger brand
The campaign was kicked off by seeding the social experiment film on Facebook, out-of-home advertising and programmatic. Leveraging this emotional connection, HSBC further spread the importance of family time by reaching parents through strong social content and partnerships, partnering with Mommy & Daddy Influencers to contribute to the conversation of what ‘quality family time’ meant to them and also ran social contests to continue engaging the target audience and drive association of VPC as the card that makes family time more fulfilling. To drive conversion, they also looked at the customer journey with an action-driven digital strategy, actively leveraging on retargeting to those who had already indicated interest for the VPC card through dynamic creative, displaying specific and relevant messages, based on benefits that they were interested in, on highly-targeted touchpoints like programmatic, search and social. To reach families at the right time and right place, HSBC also used custom audience and location-based media.
The campaign scored a triple-A slam dunk for a challenger brand — with breakthrough Attention, card Acquisitions and overall brand Affinity, exceeding campaign KPIs.
The campaign scored a triple-A slam dunk for a challenger brand — with breakthrough Attention, card Acquisitions and overall brand Affinity, exceeding campaign KPIs.
A social experiment film which ran in conjunction with the relaunch, achieved over 1,000,000 views. Website landings exceeded KPIs by +242%. The campaign achieved over 20% uplift in positive social conversations during its launch period, compared to 75 days pre-launch. The campaign garnered positive reviews and word-of-mouth amongst various media, industry experts and consumers – generating a total PR value of over S$50,000.
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Image: Victor Moussa / Shutterstock.com
