The banking category in Colombia has been very similar to the society where it operates. Very conservative. This is a culture still heavily influenced by the catholic religion, specially among the population with more purchasing/investing power. A place where still, female employment is very low compared to male employment. A nation where anything too progressive is considered leftist and it’s polarizing due to the sad and violent recent past (the guerrilla, the narcos) and despite some advances in themes related to diversity and inclusion, in a recent poll by a respected firm (Cifras y Conceptos, 2021), 65% of Colombians still believe that homosexuality is “unacceptable”. In this type of society, a traditionally conversative category such as financial services would not dare to have a more open and progressive attitude, that would be unthinkable and even counterproductive.

In a country that is still conservative where only 4% of trans people has a formal working contract, we became the trailblazers of the corporate world in Colombia, setting a new norm by demonstrating how our way of doing business connects with our ethos and more importantly, with our new society. We needed to demonstrate that is possible to live in a country where regardless your identity everyone deserves a job in a workplace where you can bring your whole self and be respected for that. And that’s how we became the Immoral bank.

The Immoral bank:

An institution with real actions around Diversity and Inclusion, involving new hiring and retention policies regardless the candidate’s identity.

An institution that supports and even celebrates our people’s identity in mass media and digital platform, bravely and openly.

All that despite the backfire, remaining true to its principles and decisions.

Traditionally, the insight that drives the banking category (and others) is about being “a brand for people like me”: this is the traditional banking customer looking for a serious and extremely formal institution. Our competitors have been very effective at building on that for years. Banco de Bogota on their side, have been moving in a different direction. More coherent with the insight of the new generation Colombians: they are much more open and progressive than the traditional audience. Perhaps they are not the affluent GenXers or Boomers, but they surely represent the future of the category and the society at large. These are modern activists that are currently looking for other financial institutions, more liberal, less restrictive and more culturally appealing (like the fintechs). They value brave brands, willing to shake the society to make it progress . . . which it’s actually our way of doing things.

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Probably, one of the most important outcomes for the domino effect that helped us to create was the initial backlash that reached a 10% of negative sentiment, more intense at the beginning of the initiative.

In a category where positive sentiment don’t exceed a 7%, Banco de Bogota achieved a historic 49%, the highest in the category.

Brand awareness increased 18% during the period of the initiative.

We had significant increase in attributes as “brand that sets the trend” (+22 pts) and “it’s unique and different” (17+)