HSBC

A 20,000-respondent global research base turned into a full marketing funnel for retirement products: over 2,000 pieces of global media coverage, and an 18% uplift in annuity products.

Client: HSBC
Role: Design, digital and creative lead: graphic design, content creation, digital marketing
Discipline: Editorial and data
Year: 2008

Objective

HSBC Retail Bank wanted to be understood as a provider of retirement products and advice: not simply as the bank its customers already used. The strategic aim was to hold client relationships at and beyond retirement age, which meant building a brand position in a category customers actively avoid thinking about.

This was global, not a single-market campaign, and it had to work in branch, online, in the press and inside HSBC's own buildings.

Creative response

On HSBC that function delivered the graphic design, content creation and digital marketing layer: the report design, infographics, CRM materials, web tools, sales collateral and the annual research-launch content for the Future of Retirement report.

The research and the media programme were run by separate teams that the creative work fed into. Agency output across several disciplines, presented as such.

Built on a consumer survey of 20,000 respondents across 20 countries: including the UK, France, Canada, Brazil, Hong Kong and China:

CRM reports and decks. PowerPoints and reports drawing on both global and individual country findings.
“Conversation starter” materials. Built so branch and relationship staff could open a retirement discussion at all.
Web-based tools and infographics. The digital layer of the funnel.
Media messaging and press releases. Feeding the integrated PR programme.
Thought-leadership report design and sales brochures. The flagship publications and the collateral that converted off them.
Annual research-launch content. Including banner and poster decoration across HSBC corporate buildings, up to and including its London global headquarters.

A separate HSBC mandate ran in parallel on Sustainable Finance, thought leadership, video content and annual reporting for the HSBC Centre on Sustainable Finance.

Results

18%uplift in annuity products, contributed to by the online marketing funnel

2,000+pieces of global media coverage generated, within an integrated PR team

20 / 20,000, countries surveyed and respondents behind the content programme

3rd PARTY, articles placed in external publications, including the Geneva Association

Sales tools were produced for both online and branch channels, which is the part that connects the research to the annuity number: the funnel had somewhere to land.

The online marketing funnel contributed to The 2,000+ coverage figure was generated by an integrated PR team, not by the design and digital function alone.

The research programme began in 2008. By its eighth edition, media coverage had increased fifteen-fold and the work had shifted from an institutional study towards a more consumer-facing programme.

The work

The research programme was won in 2008 and held it from there. The pitch document for the eighth edition records that media coverage of the programme increased fifteen-fold across that period, and that the work was deliberately steered towards a more consumer-facing shape rather than staying an institutional research exercise.