On the occasion of ING’s 21st anniversary and considering the decline in positive sentiment toward the brand among its clients, we faced the challenge of developing a creative campaign that strengthened client engagement by placing them at the centre of the message. Our main goal was to convey the fact that the bank continues to prioritise its clients despite the bumps in the road, to convey gratitude for its clients’ loyalty over the years, and to keep building an emotional bond.

In order to prove ING has a special kind of relationship with its clients, we decided to come up with an idea no other bank could have come up with: creating a love story made out of the messages people have sent their bank on social media. On The Other Side is a short fictional film created by the human talent of renowned director Dani de la Orden and the A.I. of a data science tool (Graphext), where all the words in the dialogues come directly from real messages ING’s clients have sent their bank during 21 years of relationship. A customer engagement idea that ended up getting even further.

The strategy targeted only ING’s +4 million clients and we needed to be efficient with a single key piece that they would receive through the bank’s own channels. How could we make clients feel truly connected to the bank? By seeing themselves reflected in the piece through the only publicly available trace they leave us: their own comments on social media. From there we opted to augment the idea with the help of Big Data, collecting all the information AI offered us. The comments were categorised by sentiment (positive, negative, neutral) and work began on a script that would connect them through a love story. In addition, by releasing the piece on YouTube we created an online experience in which the actual comments of each client could be seen and accessed.

Can a love story come out of the messages people send their banks?

On The Other Side is a short fictional film created by combining the human talent of renowned director Dani de la Orden and the AI. of a data science tool (Graphext). In order to create it, the A.I. searched through more than 1million tweets and messages sent to ING Spain during 21 years of relationship with its clients, selecting specific words from them that could also be used in a romantic context. With this material, director Dani de la Orden and screenwriter Daniel González worked hand in hand to write the plot and dialogues for the story. The result was an 8-minute shortfilm in which all the dialogues come from real messages from ING’s clients. Besides its release on Youtube, we created an interactive website where users could see the real messages behind each line of dialogue.

The client loyalty campaign was conducted with practically zero media investment (less than 10,000 euros). We simply sent emails to clients and created a message for our own channels (website, etc.). The results were nearly 10x higher than the bank’s usual engagement campaigns. With negligible media investment, the short was seen in its entirety by 800,000 people, roughly 25% of the bank’s total clientele, compared to an average of 2.5% for typical loyalty campaigns. The conversation generated by the clients themselves on social platforms after the launch of the campaign helped boost brand sentiment by 10%, a figure normally only obtained by campaigns with media purchases. Given the innovative nature of the piece, combining human talent with data use, the action transcended the world of the clients for whom it was conceived and was echoed by Spain’s major media outlets, such as El País (the country’s most important media platform).