The next phase of the campaign features brand ambassadors such as British tennis champion Emma Raducanu, former Irish rugby union player Brian O’Driscoll, former South African rugby union player Bryan Habana and former Hong Kong Rugby 7s player and national netball representative Stephanie Cuvelier.
However, it is its multi-market influencer activation that will prove to be a major step forward for the bank’s marketing strategy as it targets professional expats, international investors and international students. That will feature the introduction of The Unforeign Exchange, an online community that allows people relocating to engage with people already living there and to exchange local insights.
The community, alongside the brand ambassadors, will be able to exchange ideas for hobbies and help one another with issues that they face with HSBC purposefully aiming to “offer beyond” the banking experience.
“We’re doubling down on influencers,” Ng stated. “We haven’t done a global influencer campaign like this all at once, so I’m really quite excited for the buzz that it will create in the market.”
Insights have already been generated by experts, HSBC staff and selected influencers to help customers find their feet when they reach their new homes.
Macro Influencers involved include Strictly Come Dancing’s Oti Mabuse, Niharika NM, Kayo Daniel, Bret and Evey, and Elaine Li among others whose content will begin to be distributed through their own channels over the next month.
“We are working with these macro influencers to share their journey and their experiences of living abroad and to share the things they wish they were told about living abroad,” continued Ng.
As a bank, we also want to communicate with our customers where they are, and a lot of them are on social media platforms.
—Stephanie Ng, managing director, global head of marketing, retail banking, HSBC
It’s an issue that Ng knows first-hand having relocated from her native country of Malaysia to Singapore for work and now onto Hong Kong.
“When you move borders, you want to feel that sense of belonging. That was the strategic insight that helped us frame the overall campaign,” she explained. “When I moved to Hong Kong, I wanted to understand the culture and the local nuances. For me, following an influencer in the market who was able to give me tips as to how to behave when I go to a local coffee shop really helped me.”
Ng describes the process of choosing the influencer partners for the HSBC campaign as “rigorous,” seeking people with real-life experiences they could share of relocating their lives. Credibility was key. The scale of their following was also assessed as well as their interaction with their audiences.
