Each year, 281 million people move abroad in search of opportunity. Yet the same financial barriers remain – unable to bring their credit history with them as they move, or open a bank account before they arrive – and leaves them feeling like a foreigner in their new home. As the world’s international bank, HSBC believes no matter how far you move, you should feel like you belong. So, to support the launch of the International suite of products, HSBC needed to develop a cut-through, authentic campaign that positioned them as the bank that understands the unique challenges faced when moving abroad – both emotional and financial.
“Nobody Should Feel Foreign” was developed as a solution to their global problem, understanding that changing countries was as much about financial stressors as it was about adapting to a new culture without your safety net of family and friends to fall back on.
The objectives of this campaign were to embody the Internationalist experience by telling authentic stories from around the world. This was done to:
1. Create a global sense of community amongst Internationalists
2. Drive awareness for HSBC's new Internationalist 3.0 platform for relocators
3. Drive positive brand advocacy for HSBC as a banking partner.
When internationalists cross borders for new opportunities, they sacrifice a sense of belonging. We conducted both internal and external research into the relevant markets and realised that belonging comes from the people you meet and the connections you make.
Influencers were highlighted as the best way to communicate this insight because we understood that there was no better way to communicate this than through real people who had gone through the journey of leaving their loved ones to relocate to a new and challenging country. We therefore partnered with 8 influencers across 8 key markets (USA, UK, India, Singapore, China, Australia, UAE, Hong Kong) with the aim to:
• Create a suite of content that tells their emotion-led and personal stories of movement, to show other and potential relocators that they are not alone in the tensions in this life-changing journey.
• Create 4 pieces of content with each influencer: Intro Story, Full Films, Three Things I Wish I Knew, and Wrap Up.
• Interview the influencers and work with videographers to capture them in their new cities and create our hero assets. The influencers also created emotion-led self-shot content of their personal relocation experiences.
Instead of creating scripted, branded pieces of content, we trawled each influencer’s timeline to find content that would resonate with their audience and show the real journeys they went on to make their new city feel like home. The stories were told in their voices, by them, and this translated into positive sentiment overall and a flood of comments from their followers who shared a similar experience.
The work helped establish HSBC's credibility and positioning as the world's largest international bank.
The campaign achieved over 77 million impressions spanning 60+ pieces of content, amassing over 29 million views and over 550,000 engagements – making it one of HSBC’s most successful campaigns.
It sparked a global conversation among internationalist’s, combining to help people share a sense of belonging, and cementing HSBC as the Internationalist’s bank of choice.
