Creating a new strain of banking
Three investment banks were being merged - Unicredit in Italy, HVB in Germany and CAIB in Austria.
Brief: Create a unified brand for UniCredit in time for its founding leadership conference in 6 weeks.
Insight: An investment bank with three home markets is unusual. This unique DNA is the differentiation as it can use its deep connections in and across these three markets to spot patterns and opportunities that other banks can’t.
Idea: 'Making the right connections' became the positioning line.
The campaign uses networks of connecting red spheres as the storytelling device. Coming straight out of Unicredit’s point of difference and logo, this is a strong branded asset flexible enough to illustrate the benefit of any financial product in any media. They were also fast and inexpensive to create and animate.
A highly influential senior banker on the Unicredit Executive committee said ‘I hate all financial marketing, but I have to say I can’t fault the ‘Making the Right Connections positioning - it’s exactly what we do.’
Founding leadership launch event: On arrival each of the 200 ‘founders’ was handed a red sphere with their name on it. Within an hour all had added their sphere to a large DNA molecule structure which stood as a symbol throughout the conference. It’s still standing in the CEO’s office.
At the end of the conference, delegates were given a large jigsaw piece. Fourteen minutes later they had pieced together the biggest jigsaw in Europe. On the jigsaw were their names on 200 individual red spheres. The spheres spelled out a phrase “Connected for Success.’ We asked them all to find and stand on their named sphere and then look up. We took a photo with a camera that was suspended above them and used the image on various follow up coms.
Airplane media