#MobExAwards highlight: How HSBC tapped on mobile to grow its personal loan audience base

Like many banks, HSBC has a personal loan offering in Singapore. Despite this attractive offering, the bank is still not getting much sign ups from consumers. Unfazed, the brand worked with Ogilvy and PHD to launch the HSBC more than a personal loan campaign to strengthen its market share. This led both Ogilvy and PHD to win gold for Best Use of Mobile - Banking Services at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's recent MobEx Awards 2020.

Challenges

The market penetration of HSBC Singapore's personal loan offerings is low, with only 8% of personal loan holders in the country using its services. The bank cited the extremely cluttered space as a key reason, with competitors offering more attractive welcome gifts as hooks. In addition to competitors such as banks, HSBC also competes with comparison sites which are aggressively targeting in-market users to visit their pages. Thus, despite being one of the first banks to be established in the market, HSBC realised there was a lack of affinity for its brand.

As such, it wanted to create a campaign that could increase brand preference for HSBC as the main provider for personal loan through the establishment of stronger affinity and meaningful connections. The campaign will also eventually need to drive consumers to consider and take up the HSBC personal loan offering.

Despite the challenge, HSBC saw an opportunity to grow its base among the affluent audience. Its HSBC personal loan offering page visitors have shown high affinity to affluent audience traits. For example, they are either luxury travellers or they have visited other HSBC services pages with higher income eligibility, such as – HSBC Visa infinite and HSBC Premier. Based on this, the bank narrowed its focus to individuals from the emerging and mass affluent group who are aged between 25 to 45.

Strategy

Previously, its marketing efforts to drive awareness of the HSBC personal loan offering focused on radio and press to drive. To better connect with its new target audience and capture attention, the bank produced creatives that can be digested easily for on-the-go consumption. At the same time, 61% of its online budget was allocated to mobile.

To effectively reach and engage its audiences at different moments, HSBC created a full funnel approach with a mobile-first strategy:
1. Drive awareness by creating impact and cut through in a cluttered space.
2. Build association that HSBC's personal loan offering helps you to achieve your ambitions.
3. Activate customers who are actively searching for a personal loan.

HSBC took a mobile-optimised and user-driven approach to drive immersive personal experience on the go. The team wanted to ensure that every ad was relevant to each individual and easily understood. As for the creative process, the team came up with a value proposition that cuts the clutter, by positioning HSBC's personal loan offering as a smart tool for savvy investors to support their personal goals or family's ambition for the future, without compromising their current lifestyle.

Its strategic proposition was simple - For a better tomorrow without compromising your now. It aimed to reframe what Singaporeans thought about personal loan into three varying perspectives - me, them, us. It wanted consumers to understand that HSBC Personal Loan enables consumers to fund their passion, their dreams and ambitions to enjoy a better tomorrow, without compromising their today.

HSBC's campaign featured a "Choose your own adventure" video to address its customers' diverse emotional reasons in taking up a personal loan. According to the brand, the video style developed was a first-time for HSBC Singapore and tailored to how consumers interact on mobile. It also enabled audiences to personalise their experience. To enable relatability, the opening scene begins with the protagonist working late in the office. Audiences are guided along various milestones in life depending on their choices following either one of the four routes developed. This experimental approach allowed them to unfold their life’s passions and how these can be achieved with the HSBC Personal Loan.

At the same time, a film was also developed to spark thoughts on what consumers want to achieve next in their life, by giving a complete picture of various possibilities. Be it a personal ambition in career or starting a family, consumers can realise how these aspirations are available with the HSBC Personal Loan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=ProVvcKSl_8

Execution

The campaign was executed in three key phases:

1. Impacting and creating awareness in the market.
2. Building the association that HSBC Personal Loan helps you to achieve your ambitions.
3. Activating in-market and engaged users to sign up for HSBC Personal Loan.

Phase one involved provoking customers to think about their aspirations. A long form video was produced to give Singaporeans an overview of the story, featuring all the possible ways their aspirations can be achieved via the HSBC Personal Loan. For a better mobile experience, vertical videos were used to drive impact and cut through the clutter. Facebook Video Link Ads were also used to deliver bite-sized content to capture consumers' attention on the feed.

At the same time, HSBC also leveraged YouTube pre-roll formats with Google's new life events, for example, getting married soon and moving soon, to build association between HSBC Personal Loan and consumers at various life stages where a personal loan becomes relevant. Additionally, HSBC bought into outstream video to reach its audiences when reading relevant content, such as family travel and home decor. Ab out 75% of the budget for this format was prioritised on mobile. On the offline front, HSBC also did media outreach and advertised on buses and on radio.

Phase two of the campaign involved engaging with its target audience by repurposing the long form video with interactivity, allowing consumers to envision achieving their aspirations. Its interactive videos ran across YouTube pre-roll and websites to sustain its previous presence on the spaces in phase one. More than 80% of the total budget for this format was prioritised on mobile. HSBC also added new activity such as Facebook Canvas Ad to bring the interactivity onto social channels on mobile.

Additionally, the bank also created content articles to further strengthen the notion that HSBC enables Singaporeans to achieve their ambitions. HSBC tied up with Channel NewsAsia and MustShareNews to create snackable articles offering tips on ways to get closer to one's dreams. It also tapped on long form video to inspire audiences while prioritising mobile due to higher dwell times. The objective of this phase was to gather data, understand what matters to most of its target audience.

The last phase involved following up with customers' aspirations. Audiences who engaged with ads were seamlessly picked up by HSBC's acquisition campaigns. By using digital tools, the bank was able to segment high intent users, allowing it to tweak creative messaging, call-to-action, bidding, and recency in real-time across search, display, social, and native to drive loan applications.

Results

The mobile-optimised and interactive creative approach allowed HSBC to catch the attention of Singaporeans and connect with them across various moments. According to HSBC, consumers showed interest in watching the story of achieving their aspirations, with video views exceeding thrice its run-rate target. View-through rate was also two times higher than HSBC's benchmark. Website visits for HSBC Personal Loan also exceeded target by 38%, and completed applications across all channels surpassed its target by 1% during the campaign period. It was also 20% higher compared to average monthly approved applications before the launch.

HSBC also saw increased engagements online. According to the bank, it dominated social conversations surrounding personal loan on Facebook, Twitter, news, and forums. HSBC Personal Loan had a 358% volume of conversations compared to Standard Chartered, and 129% over DBS during the campaign period. Majority of these conversations came from news and forums (87%).

At the same time, its content partnerships also gathered positive engagement, with its average social post engagement rate increasing by two times more. Meanwhile, the HSBC Personal Loan was also perceived as more unique and innovative, its different index score increase by seven points (9%) compared to the first half of last year (H1 2019). Its salient index score also increased by 5% more compared to H1 2019, while its customer satisfaction score increased by 4% more compared to H1 2019.