Financial Services

CASE STUDY

Swiss Re

Future-proofing the brand in a rapidly changing world 

Challenge

The world – and what needs to be insured and reinsured – is fundamentally changing. Swiss Re, a world-leading provider of reinsurance and insurance, had seen the needs of its clients and partners reshaped by the likes of global warming, the expanding role of digital and data in consumers’ lives, new types of risk and an increasingly disruptive competitor set.  

Swiss Re had already evolved its business strategy to better address these new, emerging realities and the changing risk landscape. But, with a new customer-centric business strategy in place, it was vital that the Swiss Re brand better connected with its audiences in a more compelling way. 

Solutions

Prophet partnered with Swiss Re to redefine their brand strategy, including a refreshed brand positioning, an evolved visual identity and a first-in-kind audio brand. Collaborating with all corners of the global Swiss Re team – and with a deep understanding of the challenges that the brand needed to address – we set about developing a more relevant and differentiated position in the market.   

The refreshed brand positioning now reflects the dynamic, digital-first Swiss Re has become and demonstrates the firm’s growth ambition. This distinctive positioning brings its tech and innovation, data and insights and societal leadership strengths to the fore to better reflect new types of risk that clients face, as well as attract new talent and partners. 

To support the new brand strategy, there was a need to advance the visual identity to embrace all facets of the business and build a sense of ‘oneness’ in today’s digital world. Prophet partnered with the team to activate the identity with a suite of design assets including bespoke imagery, to act as a metaphor for how Swiss Re powers progress and their unique perspectives on the world. And – rather atypical for a business-to-business brand – an audio brand was introduced to strike the right tone and deliver a more contemporary expression of the brand. 

Results

Awarded a prestigious Red Dot Design Award in 2022 and a German Brand Award in 2023, the sophisticated refreshed brand reaffirms Swiss Re’s leading position in the industry as a future-ready business, working to attract new talent, stand out against the competition and unlock new opportunities​ for the company. Well received internally, it is also resonating with employees, enforcing the unifying notion of ‘oneness.’  

“Prophet’s unique approach to strategic design has delivered a far more contemporary and sophisticated expression of the brand. We couldn’t be more proud of the outcome.”

Dr. Jan Dietrich Müller
Head Group Communications, Managing Director

CASE STUDY

MetLife

Creating a differentiated retirement solution value proposition for the new generation of customers

Challenge

MetLife, one of the largest life insurance companies in the world, is committed to providing deep and meaningful values to its customers as a trusted life partner.  

Prophet has been a long-term partner with MetLife to help the brand propel its customer-centric transformation across the globe. In China, we started by helping MetLife China develop the overall customer value proposition – “Global Protection, Human Care.” We have also developed a series of customer-centric value propositions and solutions, including health, wealth, and education, to accelerate its transformation ambition in China. 

Retirement planning has been a rising need for Chinese consumers, given the aging population, declining fertility rate, shortage of public retirement funds and the shortage of retirement facilities in China. MetLife partnered with Prophet to uncover insights into Chinese consumers’ retirement needs and to co-create a distinctive and compelling retirement value proposition and solution that truly meets Chinese consumers’ retirement needs. 

Solutions

Through our research, we found that younger Chinese consumers, between the ages of 30 to 45, feel anxious and uncertain about retirement.  

To understand consumer retirement needs, we spoke to people from different life stages and household statuses. From there, we identified four consumer insights that create distinctive market opportunities for MetLife China to develop its retirement value proposition: 

  • Retirement preparation: First, retirement needs do not start in people’s 60s. Consumers want to start retirement planning early. Health issues often trigger consumers to start thinking about retirement planning. Protecting themselves from aging-related health issues has become a big part of their retirement preparation beyond financial preparation. 
  • Retirement services: In China, while most retirees prefer to stay in their homes for retirement, there’s a shortage of retirement services and facilities options. Consumers are less worried about covering their daily living expenses and medical bills and are instead concerned about access to quality services and facilities.  
  • Family support: For Chinese consumers, retirement is not an individual need but requires planning as a family. Most of them need to ensure support for their elderly parents before they can think about retirement preparation for themselves which still requires not only financial support but also quality retirement and health service support. 
  • Mental health: Retirement is more than just financial stability. It is also about the long-established life rhythm and goals. Many Chinese consumers feel a loss of identity and meaning after they retire. A critical part of ensuring individuals thrive in retirement is to figure out how to be mentally prepared and how to leverage the abundant free time to explore new hobbies, expand their horizons and socialize. 

After gaining a deep understanding of these needs, our team worked with MetLife to articulate its retirement value proposition– “Helping you and your family achieve total preparation towards a fulfilling life post-retirement.” We also worked with MetLife’s key stakeholders to co-create the product, service and experience of the retirement solution and developed a clear roadmap to bring the retirement solution to life and for future upgrades. 

Next, our design team created graphics to bring the value proposition to life visually by developing detailed design guidelines for the retirement solution to ensure its visual identity system is compatible with MetLife’s master brand visual system and architecture. Additionally, we have designed brochures and other communication materials for internal and external communications. 

Results

MetLife China launched its new retirement solution, 360Future, in December 2022. Through a live-streaming launch event, MetLife shared inspiring stories and distinctive insights from their employees, customers and industry experts. 

Prophet’s Associate Partner, Lily Wen was invited to join the panel discussion to highlight global and Chinese consumers’ unique challenges toward retirement. “Consumers’ retirement needs are multi-dimensional. Helping them develop the numerical financial goal alone can’t truly solve their worries, anxiety, and confusion toward retirement,” Lily said, “Financial service companies must address Chinese consumers’ holistic needs, by supporting their desire to secure their parents’ retirement while providing quality health and medical services beyond just financial security.” 

CASE STUDY

GAINS

Inspiring the next generation of girls with a new messaging strategy

Challenge

Though more women than ever are graduating with degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, men make up most of the workforce. This is because many young girls do not pursue a career in STEM, they have more barriers to getting there, they’re traditionally offered less encouragement and they have fewer female role models.

Girls Advancing in STEM (GAINS) Initiative is a nonprofit on a mission to break down barriers by empowering high school girls to envision, prepare for and pursue academic and professional futures in STEM. GAINS’ clubs and conferences tackle this head-on by helping students discover STEM topics and professions, connect with other like-minded girls and learn from industry professionals. To further its mission and expand its impact, GAINS needed a compelling messaging strategy that would resonate with a wide audience to grow its membership and clubs around the country.

Solutions

Drawing insights from a series of qualitative interviews with students and volunteers, we collaborated with the GAINS leadership team to define a new brand strategy framework for the organization. Prophet’s consultants added substantive detail to the framework—developing the context statement, brand promise and overarching theme, which formed the foundation of the work. 

Once these elements were in place, our team of strategists and verbal branding experts built out robust messaging guidelines to reinforce the core components of this newly defined strategy. We created three supporting messaging themes to spotlight the community, learning opportunities and networking benefits of GAINS. Through a rigorous creative process, we codified messaging guidelines to help bring the new strategy to life. The guidelines included sample words and phrases for each theme, guidance on when to leverage each theme and how to flex them by audience (current and prospective students, teachers and volunteers) and tips on how to ensure a consistent tone of voice across all copy.  

Results

The GAINS team has used this messaging across its website, social media channels and marketing materials to target current and prospective students, teachers and volunteers – helping the organization consistently grow its following. In addition, Prophet’s work has helped the organization communicate its mission when applying for grants and seeking partnerships with schools and employers.  

Testimonial

“The whole Prophet team listened really well to everything, caught a lot of the nuance and was able to reflect it back as they structured our messaging materials. Having this all laid out has truly helped me refine the message and maintain consistency in our communications.”

Antoinette Decker
Director, Creator

CASE STUDY

Financial Services Company

Putting customers at the center of an organization’s transformation

Challenge

A large, US financial services company was seeing declining growth in customer acquisition and revenue. Facing key market forces – including shifting consumer behaviors toward greater collaboration and personalization, new threats from fintech entrants and intense competition for top talent – the C-Suite and Board of Directors decided to embark on a complete transformation of the business.

Solutions

Prophet partnered with the company’s CEO, Chief Growth Officer and leadership team to design a transformation agenda that answered a series of strategic questions around:

  • Developing the organization’s purpose-based strategy
  • Prioritizing key markets and target customers
  • Aligning on key products, services and experiences to develop
  • Building the culture and capabilities required to support the transformation

Prophet then created a multi-year, enterprise-wide roadmap that detailed the initiatives necessary to transform multiple parts of the business in parallel. A Transformation Management Office (TMO) was established to enable and accelerate the company’s three-year transformation, largely through quarterly alignment and funding cycles.

While helping manage the transformation, Prophet brought multi-disciplinary teams to help execute the work across business value drivers: Brand & Marketing, People & Organization, Customer Experience, Products & Services, Sales & Distribution, Data & Analytics.  Along the way, Prophet has partnered to build new capabilities and codify processes so the organization can keep transformation momentum in the years to come.

Results

Prophet successfully launched a new brand that established the financial services provider as a leader in the industry. We helped develop a new employee value proposition to recruit top advisors and a new variable annuity product to grow its existing business. Prophet also introduced new revenue streams by helping expand its mutual funds’ presence on third-party platforms and creating a new managed account product – all while targeting and acquiring new buyer segments.

A year into the customer-centric transformation, Prophet is helping drive results such as +5% market awareness, +8% in new business revenue and a 20X increase in new leads.

Impact

5%

increase in market awareness

8%

increase in new business revenue

20x

increase in new leads

CASE STUDY

Vantage

Reinvigorating a Fintech brand to drive growth

Challenge

Founded in 2009, Vantage is a global multi-asset broker offering clients access to services for trading contracts-for-difference (CFDs) on forex, commodities, indices and shares. As competition in online CFD trading intensifies and customer expectations evolve, Vantage’s brand had become less relevant and harder to differentiate. In addition, its visual identity, which served the broker well in the past decade, lacked a clear proposition and emotional appeal.

A business with the scale and ambition of Vantage needs to make sure that its brand expression is not only consistent and coherent globally, but also relevant to both institutional broker (IB) partners and individual retail investors across different markets. Thus, Prophet was engaged to reinvigorate Vantage’s brand with a clear, insights-driven brand positioning and modern, compelling visual identity.

Solutions

Prophet took a hypothesis-led yet rigorous approach to activate Vantage’s internal expertise and explore new external opportunities. By immersing in stakeholder interviews, 360-degree competitor audit, as well as AI-driven customer research, we obtained a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of Vantage, including its ambition to its capabilities, competitors and target customers.

Our strategy team then used these insights to define Vantage’s new brand positioning – to “provide a trusted trading ecosystem that enables customers to achieve their own success, faster and simpler”. Based on the brand positioning, we crafted a messaging framework and the brand voice to guide what the brand says and how the brand speaks. We also simplified its brand name from “Vantage FX” to “Vantage” to better reflect the company’s ambition to be a multi-asset trading platform beyond FX trading.

To bring the strategy to life, our design team built upon the big idea of “Shared Success” and applied the Fibonacci Golden Ratio in creating Vantage’s new visual identity system. The Fibonacci Golden Ratio is not only permeated in nature and art but also prevalent in financial markets – Fibonacci retracement levels are often key indicators to predict market movements. The idea resonates with the brand category and strategy to resemble precision, growth patterns, perfect harmony and concise prediction of patterns in an ecosystem.

To help Vantage envision its new visual identity, we created customized iconography, brand and photography guidelines, as well as a wide range of applications including website and mobile app re-skin.

Results

Vantage launched its new brand globally with a resounding impact.  It was well-received by industry peers at its unveiling in November 2021. The group achieved a significant increase of nearly 30% in new users in three months, compared to the same period before the rebrand.

Vantage was also recognized at the 2021 Transform Awards Asia, for the categories of ‘Best brand development project to reflect the changed mission, values or positioning’ and the ‘Best visual identity from the financial services sector’.

“Our rebranding exercise was the long-awaited change that our business needed, and Prophet was the ideal partner to assist us through the entire process. From the initial interviews to the final reveal of our new brand identity, the Prophet team has been more than instrumental in its assessment and recommendations,” says David Shayer, CEO of Vantage UK.

“The results of the rebrand speak for itself. Removing FX from our name has allowed us to speak more closely to our multi-asset offering, and our new brand puts us closer to our clients who share the same values. With a refocused business direction, we are empowered to continue the work of enhancing our tools and platforms to bring about an unparallel trading experience for our clients.

“The rebrand has also opened doors to some prominent partnerships, including our recent sponsorship of the McLaren Extreme E, which highlights our push for greater sustainability, diversity, and inclusion within the financial services industry in the coming years.”

“From the initial interviews to the final reveal of our new brand identity, the Prophet team has been more than instrumental in their assessment and recommendations.”

David Shayer
UK CEO

CASE STUDY

Global Investment Advisory Firm

Developing a revamped direct marketing strategy to drive sales and ROI

Challenge

The client, a major investment advisory firm, had a history of successfully executing aggressive direct marketing tactics. In fact, nearly all of its customers were acquired through direct advertising.

While the company was experiencing steady growth, it had an ambitious goal of doubling its assets under management within just a few years. To achieve this, the organization needed help attracting new client profiles and successfully moving prospects through the marketing funnel.

Solutions

Through qualitative and quantitative consumer research of prospects in four countries, our team of financial services experts partnered with the investment advisory company to gain a deep understanding of the existing prospect journey and identify the conversion gaps on the way to becoming a paying customer.

By taking a digital approach, we uncovered that our client could:

  • Better reach prospects with varying degrees of familiarity with the company
  • Add interventions at key decision points of hiring a financial advisor
  • Develop engaging direct marketing content

To bring the strategy to life, Prophet helped the client create an activation roadmap to illustrate how to convert prospects by focusing on both short-term ‘Quick Wins’ and longer-term initiatives. The roadmap is supported by a ‘test and learn’ pilot plan outlining specific processes, KPIs and resources needed to measure impact.

Results

Our project had a few key impacts on our client’s business. First, we transformed their view of the prospect journey. We helped the team of leaders see that the route from prospect to the client is dynamic, but it can be directed at key inflection points. Second, we demonstrated that a broader range of prospects could be converted into clients through our new view of the prospect journey and our market research analysis. As a result, our client changed their view of who qualifies as a ‘qualified prospect.’ Finally, our actionable activation roadmap accelerated the client’s direct marketing efforts and propelled it toward achieving its ambitious growth goal.

As a result of our project, our client observed a direct lift in sales and better ROI on direct marketing spending.

CASE STUDY

AXA

Meet Emma, the future of humanized insurance experience

Challenge

AXA is one of the world’s leading insurance companies offering diverse financial services globally. To successfully grow its business in Asia, the client recognized the need to create a more consistent and human brand throughout the region.

On the back of a new global vision – from Payer to Partner – AXA partnered with Prophet to develop an Asia-specific solution that would deliver on their ambition to:

  1. create a more consistent customer journey and brand experience across the region
  2. develop a new customer engagement proposition that also humanize the experience through a new digital platform
  3. develop digital touchpoints to drive greater engagement with existing and potential customers.

Solutions

Through deep consumer research and segmentation, Prophet partnered with AXA to create a regional well-being strategy, develop a new customer experience, and run UX & UI sprints to design a new digital product.

We began by conducting a multi-country regional segmentation, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative research across five key markets in Asia (China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Thailand and Japan). Over 4,000 customers were surveyed to better understand what they wanted from an insurance company when it came to their health, well-being and mental health. This research created the foundation for the development of a value proposition that defined the future of digital customer experience (DCX) at AXA.

To bring the strategy to life, we set out to reimagine the customer experience, taking a fresh look at how to create a new insurance platform that combined insurance e-servicing, 3rd party health and wellness digital services and a new conversational chatbot and virtual concierge. Importantly, at the core of this new experience was an empathetic and human approach on well-being topics for customers, elevating the AXA brand on an experience level never attempted at the organization.

From this strategic foundation, Emma was born — AXA’s first humanized user interface, which became the core of the brand’s new digital customer experience. This seamless experience – from claims to servicing, health content, symptom checker, and more – was embodied in a single Emma ecosystem for current AXA customers as well as prospects.

With Payer to Partner at the core of its proposition, Emma’s persona was designed to be an Empathetic Navigator, helping individuals find the solutions and content most relevant to their well-being needs. Prophet further “personified” Emma, crafting a real-life avatar, her tone of voice, and the visual expression across a full identity system.

A key highlight of the process was a two-day Hackathon to create “Emma”. Over 70 global leaders and stakeholders across diverse disciplines gathered together to “hack” the Emma experience. It was the first time in AXA’s history and probably the largest cross geographic collaboration of its kind.

Results

Emma was piloted then launched in Hong Kong in Q4 of 2019.

Emma is bridging the gap between digital engagement and financial advisor partners. As of 1H of 2020, Emma’s launch in Hong Kong drew more than 2 million logins, exceeding expectations. Emma is now being rolled out across the rest of Asia.

The digital brand experience we created for AXA won the gold award for “Best Use of Digital in the Financial Services Sector” at the 2021 Digital Impact Awards Asia, as well as two awards at the 2020 Transform Awards Asia, including a gold award for “Best Brand Experience” and a silver award for “Best Visual Identity” from the financial services sector.

CASE STUDY

MB Bank

Creating and launching a new brand to tell MB’s transformation story

Challenge

In 2018, MB Bank (Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank), one of the largest financial groups in Vietnam, initiated a multi-year transformation program in partnership with Prophet, to become a digital-first, customer-centric bank with an ambitious goal of aggressively growing its customer base.

After in-depth customer research, MB learned that it was seen as dated and uninspiring. The bank needed a more modern and fresh brand to attract new customers.

The bank’s hallmark 25th anniversary in November of 2019 presented the perfect opportunity to launch the new brand, reflecting the bank’s transformation to become more modern, digital and customer-centric.

Solutions

In line with their ambition, we developed a new brand platform that captured the essence of MB’s transformation to be a modern bank that enriches the future of people and businesses. The new brand is anchored in the promise that customers will get access to banking that is innovative, trustworthy and as convenient as possible. We also created a tagline to sum up the essence of the new brand: Intelligent Banking. Enriching Your Future.

In parallel, Prophet also created a new logo and designed a comprehensive visual system with key assets to bring the new brand to life.

We then worked with MB and local partners to plan and launch the new brand in the market. We designed a suite of internal assets to educate and generate excitement among employees, including an internal website, posters, videos and photobooths. We also supervised the creation of an external advertising campaign, including a brand video and OOH assets to be displayed throughout Vietnam through strategic media planning.

Results

Following an internal rollout to inspire and educate employees, the MB Bank rebrand was then officially launched to the public on the day of MB’s 25th anniversary, marking the next chapter of their growth on their journey towards transformation.

MB Bank was awarded ‘Most Improved Bank of the Year’ for its refreshed brand platform along with two other awards at The Asian Banker Vietnam Awards 2020.

Our work with MB Bank was awarded gold at the 2020 Transform Awards Asia for “Best Brand Development Project to Reflect a Change of Mission/Values/Positioning”.

“We are delighted to have a trusted strategic partner in Prophet and they have played a crucial role in our very important transformation journey as we evolve towards becoming a digital-first bank.”

Mr. Thai
CEO, MB Bank

Impact

48.8%

increase in revenue in 2021

23.4%

increase in ROE in 2021

8.3m

newly acquired customers in 2021 and 2022

CASE STUDY

Moneyfarm

Helping a robo-advisor expand to new markets

Challenge

Moneyfarm, one of Europe’s largest digital wealth management companies, had its sights set on entering the German market. When Allianz Global Investors bought a stake in the robo-advisor, the two companies set plans in motion to launch a new multi-asset product in the local market following demand from digitally-native savers and investors.

Prophet was enlisted to facilitate this expansion and to harvest the potential of Moneyfarm’s move into Germany and beyond.

Solutions

We set to work developing an intuitive way to communicate the benefits of this integrated partnership.

The goal was to establish an endorsed brand architecture solution that maximized positive equity transfer between the traditional financial services brand and the fintech start-up; leveraging Allianz’s solid reputation and high awareness in the German market and Moneyfarm’s strong tech and innovation credentials.

We then worked to craft and distil a value proposition and go-to-market strategy specifically tailored to the needs of German customers and the products available to them. Communicating the unique benefit of active returns at passive prices delivered by human expertise with robo-advisory efficiency and precision.

Results

Armed with a brand and strong value proposition that clearly communicates the strategic alliance, Moneyfarm is well on its way to achieving its growth plans. Just one month after its launch in Germany in June 2019, Moneyfarm saw a significant jump in client activation and investments of over one million.

Not only is Moneyfarm well on its way to achieving its growth plans in this new market, it’s also broadening the availability of digital wealth management in a cost-effective and accessible structure.

“Prophet helped us at this crucial moment in our company’s history as we looked to define and execute the right strategy to realize our growth ambitions.”

Giovanni Daprà
Co-founder and Chief Executive at Moneyfarm

CASE STUDY

Sun Life

Developing a brand story that resonates in Hong Kong

Challenge

Sun Life engaged Prophet to reposition its brand and develop a new marketing campaign that would help cut through the clutter and inspire customers to engage with Sun Life versus competitors. Sun Life couldn’t compete in terms of spending and scale, so they needed to develop a brand story that would resonate and a campaign that would stand out.

Solutions

Prophet realized that what the industry was communicating was at odds with what consumers really wanted. Insurance providers spoke about fear and the need to hedge against life’s inherent risks, whilst people hoped for bright futures for themselves and their loved ones. Prophet identified an opportunity to frame insurance as an enabler of dreams rather than a guardian against inescapable peril.

Prophet created Sun Life’s brand positioning leveraging one key insight: consumers in Hong Kong want to dream bigger and live brighter lives—and they want their financial services provider to help. To bring the positioning to life, we translated “Dare to Dream. Live a Brighter Life” into the creative concept of the #BE campaign – “Be everything you want to.” The #BE campaign expressed Sun Life’s promise, that they are here to encourage and challenge people not just to dream, but to turn their dreams into a reality. The campaign was executed across channels including television, print and at various out-of-home touchpoints including street billboards and the MTR.

Results

The new brand positioning and the #Be Campaign drove a lot of impact, increasing brand awareness among target customers and energizing the Sun Life employee and agent base to rally around a refined and inspiring brand story. It gave Sun Life the ability to target the right customers, better articulate the value of their products and deliver a consistent, engaging brand experience for agents and customers alike.

Our work with Sun Life won GOLD for ‘Best creative strategy’ at 2018 Transform Awards APAC.

CASE STUDY

Major Payments Provider

Bridging global innovation gaps through digital transformation

Challenge

A major payments technology company had over many years developed a network of 10 innovation centers around the world. Each innovation center was designed and launched by leaders in different geographies and with differing capabilities, operating models and approaches to serving company account teams and their clients.

While some cross-pollination of ideas and frameworks was taking place, there was no standardized agreement on what might be necessary to drive greater value.

The company recognized that a more consistent operating model was needed, and in 2018 the company decided to move all the innovation centers under a single global leader. This new leader was tasked with driving synergies between the innovation center leaders and establishing a new, universally accepted operating model.

Solutions

The company engaged Prophet to bring the innovation leaders together to rapidly build trust among them and encourage knowledge sharing. From there they could work toward consensus on a go-forward operating model and action plan for putting it into practice.

To start the alignment process, Prophet’s team led the innovation leaders in activities that provided insight into their own preferences and motivations within the innovation process, allowing each leader to meet each other on equal footing. The subsequent knowledge-sharing activities were designed to quickly establish commonality and shared interests. The first two activities were so effective that aligning on the go-forward operating model, key areas for standardization and the action plan was remarkably straightforward.

Results

The team quickly aligned on priorities, an action plan and expectations moving forward.  The head of global innovation and design at the company said:

“Designing and delivering this kind of iconic event for a team of highly independent and experienced innovation leaders (who regularly run these kinds of events themselves for our global clients) required a firm who could confidently bring deep, demonstrated subject matter expertise in innovation, digital product development and event facilitation. I trusted the Prophet team to rapidly get us to breakthrough team dynamics and an actionable plan, and they totally delivered.”

CASE STUDY

Addiko Bank

Regaining brand reputation & customer trust

Challenge

How do you revitalize a bank that’s had serious reputation issues? Following the fallout from the financial crisis and being nationalized by the state, Austria’s Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank (Hypo Bank) was dealing with serious legacy issues. By the time Advent International, a private equity investor, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) acquired it in 2015, consumers’ consideration of Hypo was very low.

Solutions

The new owners knew it needed a brand-new bank, and in January of 2016, Prophet was enlisted to help rebuild it from the ground up. In a matter of weeks, we worked with bank executives to rename it Addiko. A clear signal of change, the new brand name gave the bank a blank slate and a second chance with consumers.

Our research uncovered a crucial customer insight that people in Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia felt confused by overly complex banking products. We realized that while most banks pile on more products and paperwork, customers actually want less. They want a simpler, hassle-free way of banking. This led to Addiko’s new brand promise: Straightforward banking that focuses on essentials. That meant becoming more efficient, with shorter queues, and more digital and mobile options. And it called for communicating simply, eliminating jargon, shortening contracts and avoiding asterisks. A clever graphic character, cleanly drawn, walked consumers through the changes, as did a complete advertising campaign.

We also helped Addiko coach employees to “acknowledge and tackle” the challenges they faced. This approach to straightforward banking, which stands for a proactive, optimistic and down-to-earth way of doing business, has become the bank’s mantra.

Results

Since its launch Addiko has seen a robust turnaround, posting positive net results and a listing on the Vienna Stock Exchange, confirming the demand for a specialist player that challenges the traditional universal banks with a simpler and focused model.

Serving its clients with convenience and speed, not only is Addiko now a strong and profitable retail and SME bank, it’s an award-winning one too after scooping six Transform Europe Awards, acknowledging the brand’s transformational journey. The Financial Brand also named it among the most beautiful brand identities in banking.

Addiko’s CEO said, “Strategy is about making choices. It’s about deliberately choosing to be different and we decided to be straightforward. But the Addiko brand does not only represent a name change. It is our new business strategy, our unique positioning, our desire to introduce and implement new, higher business standards, and a new corporate culture. But first and foremost, it is our commitment to improving and changing the way we feel banking should be done. The Addiko brand and this transformation is the starting point for building a better bank. A straightforward bank.”

With brand recognition levels far surpassing that of its predecessor, as well as higher levels of employee retention and customer loyalty than its main competitors, Addiko is on a successful path toward continued growth, with a commitment to improving and changing the way banking should be done.

“The diversity of the Prophet team ensured a very vibrant creative environment, generating genuinely very different alternative creative routes, rather than variations on a single idea.”

Razvan Munteanu
CEO at Addiko Bank

Impact

48.6%

brand awareness in the market 3 months after launch

10.94%

customer consideration after 3 months in market

5x

increase in GAP compared to market average

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