HSBC/Bell Pottinger Entry
Company: HSBC
Submitted by: Bell Pottinger Business & Brand
Company Description: Headquartered in London, HSBC is one of the largest financial services organisations in the world. HSBC's international network comprises around 8,000 offices in 88 countries spanning Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa.
Nomination Category: Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, & Public Relations Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Global Issues
Nomination Title: The Future of Retirement
1. Tell the story about this nominated campaign since 1 January 2011 (up to 500 words). Be sure to cover the genesis, development, performance, and results of the campaign.
COMMUNICATIONS CAMPAIGN OVERVIEW
HSBC identified global ageing as a business priority in 2005, when it commissioned a retirement research and thought-leadership programme entitled ‘The Future of Retirement’ (‘FoR’).
After five successful years, the ambitions for the 2011 programme were greater than ever before. The challenge was to maximise value of the research findings from 17,000 respondents globally, drawing on these insights to raise consumer consideration of HSBC as the world’s leading retirement service provider. Other specific objectives were to:
- Deliver unprecedented media coverage internationally, meeting an Advertising Value Equivalent target of $7m with 95% favourability and 80% key message penetration - Support marketing and sales activities via compelling messaging and training - Boost staff engagement via staff launches and internal communications - Encourage increased use of findings in customer sales conversations and marketing activities
At the heart of these objectives was the desire to utilise the campaign to add value to HSBC businesses globally and locally.
COMMUNICATION CAMPAIGN EXECUTION
To meet these challenging objectives, the research results were divided to provide content for two distinct reports: ‘The power of planning’ and ‘Why family matters’. These reports, analysing the key survey findings, acted as the cornerstone for the worldwide communication campaign.
To address the sheer scale of the programme, meticulous planning was undertaken by the London PR hub who harnessed resources within HSBC’s own teams across the globe. Each team was provided with country-specific findings as well as PR toolkits for their market, making a global campaign relevant on a local level. To create a truly integrated and transformative campaign, regional workshops were conducted to present the findings, unify the communications approach and encourage local markets to adapt the results for their sales and marketing initiatives.
COMMUNICATION CAMPAIGN RESULTS
PR/MEDIA
• 314% uplift in media coverage from the previous year
• 1,856 pieces of editorial coverage; 99% favourability, 100% key message penetration
• Advertising Equivalent Value escalating to an unprecedented $11m
• The UK’s FoR website alone attracted 3,964 hits
• 1,623 people interacted with the FoR online customer engagement tool
INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS
• FoR news posted on 30 HSBC country intranets / internal publications
• Regular WebEx’s used to share learnings with regional staff /customer segments
• Global HQ building branding/FoR-related merchandise
CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION
The programme provided content for sales and marketing collateral worldwide, with data being profiled in a ‘Wealth’ DM campaign to 226,000 USA customers. Findings were translated into a ‘Your Future’ UK sales campaign, targeting 2.7m customers, using print advertising, DM, on-line and in-branch advertising.
CONVERSION TO SALES
Campaign sales tools/insights were effectively communicated to staff, enhancing sales efforts. The introduction of sales aids including ‘Retirement Wheels’ and ‘Conversation Starters’ meant customer-facing staff secured more appointments and saw an increase in sales of annuity products; in Hong Kong an 18% uplift was observed.
79% of participating country champions said the campaign was highly valuable to them; an impressive 100% recommended it be recommissioned for 2012. In all, the campaign delivered a 6:1 return on investment, making it HSBC’s most successful FoR programme to date.
2. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that carried out this nominated communications program:
Phil Sellers
Phil is Head of Marketing, Global Insurance at HSBC, assisting their bancassurance businesses around the world with development initiatives such as The Future of Retirement. He joined HSBC in 1999 as Managing Director, General Insurance in the UK.
Prior to HSBC, Phil was at Prudential Corporation for 12 years in a variety of UK and global business development roles, and before that with Prestige and 3M in product, marketing and sales roles outside financial services.
He is an alumnus of Manchester University with a BSc Honours degree in Liberal Studies in Science.
3. Attachments/Videos/Links:
