Operations is the back-office engine of HSBC, employing some 36,000 people across seven countries to process more than 1.7 trillion transactions a year.

Yet, inside HSBC, few people know about the critical role performed by Operations or the vibrant personality of its diverse global teams.

What’s more, the identity of Operations is in flux. New technology and automation are rapidly changing the way Operations delivers services for customers.

In order to build colleagues’ engagement with the business transformation and future strategy of Operations, we set out to produce an original campaign which would celebrate the department's contribution and foster a sense of pride, connection and shared vision across the team.

The objectives:

1) create a sense of pride and unity within Operations, and celebrate the team’s work

2) raise awareness of Operations with people outside the department, both inside and outside HSBC

We proposed making a film about life in Operations, with colleagues co-creating the film, and made entirely from user-generated film.

The film would involve as many Operations colleagues as possible, and every frame of the film would be shot on colleagues’ personal devices.

This production method would lend the film authenticity and energy. Individuals and teams would film themselves at work, on volunteering projects and at home.

The combination of vibrant self-shot footage, personal insight, and fast-paced editing would draw a large audience.

Whether they actively participated in the production, or just watched the finished film, members of Operations would come away with a sense of pride in their community.

What's more, the film would celebrate and shine a light on Operations for people outside the department, whether in other departments at the bank or outside HSBC altogether.

The intention of the campaign was to give colleagues the chance to tell their own stories in their own voices, to feel part of something bigger and proud of where they work. Participation in making the film was as important to the PR campaign as the finished film itself.

We would make the film using Seenit, an app through which we could communicate directly with users and collect their UGC footage on a secure server.

We knew that Operations is a young, tech-savvy department, so were confident that colleagues there would provide a good quantity of high-quality material.

The app would also give all parts of the diasporic Operations community a voice, without privileging major markets and locations over smaller ones.

The final film would be published on all of HSBC’s external, ambient, and intranet platforms, in order to reach as many people inside and outside the department as possible.

The campaign was executed over the course of five months, from brief to publication of the main film.

“We are Operations” was launched at a global event before the Operations communications team sent out an initial call-to-action through traditional channels. This led to an initial surge of people downloading the Seenit app.

The next stage was to engage as many of those new users as possible. We interacted with every new uploader, and produced fortnightly 'sizzle reels' of the best material. These were shared on the app, as well as in departmental emails, to encourage new submissions.

With a strong base of people uploading to the app, we selected a few particularly strong users as 'heroes', encouraging them to upload more specific material. This material proved invaluable in structuring the film.

The main film was edited in September and published across HSBC’s internal and external platforms in early October.