How HSBC rediscovered its brand purpose

HSBC went back to its Hong Kong roots to rediscover its brand purpose of working together to achieve prosperity and to develop a new direction that would address the challenges it faced around trust, customer expectations and the rise of new fintech brands.

“I think that this journey has led us to produce some of the best marketing and advertising communications that we’ve produced in quite some time,” was Sam Fletcher’s bold opening declaration.

The head of insight and marketing performance at HSBC UK was speaking at the Festival of Marketing (London, October 2018) where she explained how the journey to which she referred had started at a global level. HSBC as a business had two challenges: brand equity was dropping and customers were more demanding. And these challenges were compounded by a new type of competitor: start-ups and challenger brands that...

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