HSBC has been present in India since 1853, yet it’s seen by many locals as “a bank for wealthy foreigners”. As a challenger brand struggling for local relevance, our campaign had two key objectives:

1. Drive brand salience and consideration amongst urban millennials

2. Arrest a declining Brand Power score

All of which needed to be done with a significantly smaller media budget than heavyweight rivals.

Fortunately, HSBC has key values that helped pave a way forward – values of being Open, Connected and Dependable. These values are underpinned by our belief that by championing inclusivity and diversity, removing barriers and seeking out views different to our own, we can better reflect and serve our customers and communities.

These same values hold prime importance in the minds of Indian urban millennials, so we created a campaign that celebrated this common ground.

‘India, Beyond Boundaries’ celebrates the bold and confident mindset of new India. Challenging traditional expectations and encouraging our audience to once again transcend the boundaries that limit their progress. It embodies openness towards rewriting customs and embracing change, in the pursuit of opening ourselves towards learning and growth.

The campaign holds up a mirror to urban Indian millennials – resonating with their mindset of transcending cultural stereotypes, breaking societal barriers and rewriting the rules.

Our campaign aimed at challenging traditional thinking around body shaming, gender equality, career choice, homosexuality and female independence.

It placed HSBC front and center as a brand that stands for and embraces the idea of a progressive and forward–thinking India.

Our target audience was defined by those with whom we had a shared mindset – where we could see HSBC’s values of Openness and Connectedness being reflected.

The audience we identified was ‘Indian Internationalists’. They are the open-minded. The Progressives. The Explorers. They do not believe that age-old traditions and customs should determine life choices, be it the pursuit of love, or the path to prosperity.

Demographically and behaviourally, our audience was:

• Urban millennials - aged 25-45

• Digitally savvy, constantly on the lookout for cashbacks and discounts

• Active on social media, unknowingly acting as influencers

• Interested in dining and travel, with friends and family

We created a campaign to drive salience by showing this audience the values we shared with them. What we stood for. And also, crucially, what we stood against.

The campaign used visually arresting images and bold, provocative statements, to stand out and cut through the clutter. We focused on outdoor as a key channel to give maximum visibility and talkability, as we wanted the brand’s point of view on these issues to be quite literally ‘out there’.

Between February and March 2020 we ran executions in 137 sites in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Kochi, Chennai and Coimbatore. The OOH sites were comprised of billboards, Digital OOH Screens, Unipole and Bus shelters.

On social, we ran collaboration on Instagram with Terribly Tiny Tales – one of India’s most popular content creation platforms. This was supported by paid activity on our own Twitter and Facebook channels. Social media provided the perfect environment for a campaign that demanded discussion.

1. We achieved the increase in salience needed to ensure that the Indian urban millennial audience placed us in their consideration set. The pre campaign Salience Score of 69 moved up to 92, a rise of 33%.

2. The decline in the brand power score was not only arrested, but reversed, increasing from 3 to 4, demonstrating the success of the creative strategy, and the bank’s resilience during a time of uncertainty.

The social element of the campaign delivered 3.2 million total impressions, with 178,000 total interactions through likes, shares, comments and retweets. Posts on the Terribly Tiny Tales platform were saved 8,060 times.

Overall, we had a 122% return on marketing investment during our launch quarter.