HSBC Leads Hong Kong Bankvertising Sector With Animated Video Campaign

HSBC has broken with Hong Kong banking tradition with a new digital video campaign.

The bank uses three short interactive and animated videos to showcase its services to business banking customers, which is thought to be a first for Hong Kong’s commercial banking sector.

In the first week since the official launch on November 25, two of the videos have generated more than 100,000 combined views on YouTube. A third video will be launched at the end of December.

The campaign uses social media, traditional print, out-of-home, and below-the-line advertising channels to drive customers back to a bilingual website. The videos promote HSBC’s interactive video conferencing and personal relationship manager services and the bank’s online e-banking platform.

“HSBC wanted to do something new and innovative,” says Juliza Liu, business director of Grey Group Hong Kong, who created the campaign in partnership with agency Mindshare. “Being animated and interactive, it is out of the box.”

David Ko, digital strategist and managing director at Daylight Partnership, says HSBC’s decision to orchestrate an interactive video campaign will “drive up the game” across Hong Kong’s financial services institutes.

“It is no longer true to assume financial institutions are conservative. It will be very exciting to see what will come out of it,” he says.

“This is where the bank lends itself very naturally to a video campaign – you can show or demonstrate the video conferencing component.”

He also praises the video’s mobile-friendly content. “I like the fact that they gave some thought, that much of the audience will watch the campaign on mobile. You could almost say it is a mobile-first campaign. These are business people who will be on trains, on planes – on their mobiles. What better way to reach them than with an interactive mobile campaign?”

For almost 12 months, the agency and the bank’s senior marketing team have worked closely together on the content as well as managing stakeholder approval.

Liu says, “This is the first time we did something totally different with animation so there were technical difficulties and challenges there, too.”

She adds that despite the high level of compliance and legal issues associated with working with a bank, Grey Group was given a free hand on creativity when making the videos.

Campaign measurement is being monitored by Mindshare.