HSBC Global
Comms & Branding

HSBC Global Private Banking

From 2021 to 2023, I was Global Creative Director as part of WPP's Team Helix and undertook a project to streamline, simplify and strengthen HSBC's core brand to improve a unified presence all over the world.

As a truly global bank bank, different interations of the brand were present in different regions. As such it had fallen out of sync with itself, and when viewed holistically looked fragmented and unownable, losing the iconic mark that made it famous. Our goal was to bring them all into line with a holistic vision, and hit the ground running with the roadmap of live projects.

CREATING A UNIFIED BRAND ACROSS EVERY TOUCHPOINT

From retail through affluent to ultra high net worth and business – we needed a brand that could appear unmistakably in every space, but flex to appeal to the entire spectrum of audience types. Each of these audiences operate in very different environments, and adding the fully borderless international strength of HSBC's offering, those environments also differ from country to country.

RETAIL

Across in-branch, online and all forms of marketing and promotion, the HSBC brand style was pared back to fully champion the colour and angles of the logo. Playing with the iconic hexagon, and breaking the lines through photography ensured a cohesive, minimilist style that is unmistakably the voice of the bank.

AFFLUENT

As we move into spaces for audiences with higher incomes – including home-owners, the over-50s and those with an entriely diefferent range of products and services available from the bank. The palette deepens to extend into dark reds, with the introduction of full-bleed photography, 'lens' effects on a modified brand mark created by the iconic hexagon, and a more sophisticated range of photography.

ULTRA HIGH-NET WORTH

For the those audiences with more than $30m of assets, the range of services available are more specific and cater for an entirely different set of criteria. We needed to present ourselves as fully globally connected, with access to areas that only the select few in that bracket access freely. More luxurious richer red tones along with an extended photgraphic palette that touched on pinks, purples and burgundies – all derived from nature – meant that we could keep HSBC's iconin hexagon logo as we have elsewhere and contextualise it in a rarified setting.

BRANDING FROM
THE TOP DOWN

As always, the priorities and focus of the business can outweigh the importance of a logical brand roll-out, so counter-intuitively we found ourselves needing to lead with assets for HSBC's Global Private Banking offering, aimed at an ultra high-net-worth (UHNW) audience, and including services such as large asset management, legacy planning and one-to-one private banking assistance from their team of specialists. So we started at the richer (both in colour and in audience) end of the spectrum and worked backwards.

Our scenes were carefully selected to represent types of service while representing the master UHNW extended palette, and the HSBC iconic hexagon logo embedded within it as it had been across the full brand equity exploration.

IN PRINT AND OOH

Each of our scenes represented a different tier of services available for UHNW customers through HSBC's Global Private Banking team of specialists around the world, and our copy and subcopy was introduced in accordance with the new HSBC best practice styleguide.

IN MOTION

Our audience profile for Ultra High Net Worth lives a life continually on the move, so every asset had to be premium as well a digital-first, and have the extra capability of attracting the attention of successful people dedicated to their own intricate diaries, businesses and investments, and family considerations.

AND BEYOND

This work for HSBC's top-tier UHNW audience created the framework for deeper exploration throughout their affluent and retail categories, which ultimately completed the entire brand profile across the world – setting the tone, and the blueprint, for all subsequent development through the brand's new 'Opening Up A World of Opportunity' brand promise.

TEAM

Agency – Grey London (Team Helix)
Creative Director — Murray Allan
Design Director — Steve Price
Designer — Felix Townsend
Motion Designer – Kit Suman
Masterbrand collaboration – Superunion (Graeme Haig & George Bradshaw)