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16 July 2009
Standard Bank’s first global campaign to support growth in emerging markets
Standard Bank’s first integrated global and in-country advertising campaign to support the group’s growth in emerging markets launches on 17 July.
The campaign launches in key markets and is expected to reach about 475-million people in about 30 countries.
Standard Bank Group Marketing and Communications Director Sarah-Anne Orphanides says Standard Bank is a leading emerging markets financial services organisation focused on Africa and other emerging markets, particularly those with links to Africa. This focus underpins recent acquisitions in Nigeria, Kenya, Russia, Argentina and Turkey.
“Successful business growth through acquisitions and organic growth has demonstrated Standard Bank’s unique ability to make connections with and for customers, employees and other stakeholders across different markets.
“From a marketing perspective, we support execution of the business strategy by positioning Standard Bank as a single brand, as a globally focused bank with emerging markets at the core, and as a strong regional bank,” says Orphanides.
The launch of the global campaign follows an intensive six-month internal alignment process.
Says Orphanides: “Our global positioning reflects our group vision, strategy and values. We identified attributes common to all three of our businesses units in order to define the Standard Bank DNA.”
In addition, Standard Bank sought the views of all 50 000 employees across 33 countries through an employee engagement survey called Heartbeat to provide insights into what employees think of Standard Bank, its leaders and chosen direction. “We wanted our people to help shape our future and the feedback has and is being used to build connections with our employees,” says Orphanides.
Standard Bank executives recently hosted 58 road shows in 26 countries at 33 locations around the world to connect with more than 35 000 employees and to share insights into the group’s history and plans for the future.
Standard Bank also developed an innovative social network site called BlueConnection which enables employees around the world to connect with each other using features common to Facebook and Twitter.
“The process of aligning employees and bringing everyone on board is critical to the success of our mono-brand strategy and defined positioning,” says Orphanides. “We launched this effort with a high degree of confidence that employees around the world understand what is expected of all of us to deliver to our customers and clients.”
Standard Bank’s brief to its global agency, TBWA/Hunt Lascaris, was to identify a universal idea that would position the group globally and deliver relevance in each market, product and offering.
“The new creative campaign delivers on the strategy to move our customers and clients forward through making the right connections. This alignment of business strategy and creative approach is what underpins the new Standard Bank pay-off-line of ‘Moving Forward’,” says Orphanides.
Says Standard Bank Group Brand Director Nikki Twomey: “Financial services advertising throughout the world suffers from a sea of sameness. It is difficult to tell one brand from another. We wanted to create something that was unique, that makes Standard Bank stand out from the clutter.”
Twomey says that “Moving Forward” reflects the benefits for customers and clients – “how we connect the right bits, at the right time, at the right place, in the right way in order to unlock something better and create opportunities that move you forward.”
“How we position ourselves in the markets is a reflection of our vision and strategy, the choices we make and the things we focus on. This global campaign aligns all our marketing efforts to this drive,” says Orphanides.
Standard Bank has also developed a specific South Africa campaign aligned to and supporting the global campaign that talks to its Personal & Business Banking and Corporate & Investment Banking customers and positions the bank as the leading financial services organisation.
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