How a media strategy bridging old and new worlds won MediaWorks 2024

Companies and customers alike tend to have long-term relationships with their banking partners, relying on trust and stability that grows over time. For a bank looking to win over new businesses and affluent individuals in markets where local banks fiercely defend their home turf, the challenge is highly daunting.

Nonetheless, that's the test this year’s MediaWorks delegate teams faced from client Standard Chartered (SC), who ultimately selected a winning choice that not only celebrated the bank’s historic legacy and deep roots in Asia but also innovatively combined it with targeted messaging to a modern audience.

More than an intense three-day workshop, Campaign’s MediaWorks is an intense annual trial-by-fire for dozens of young media professionals. Held recently in Bangkok, the event split 43 aspiring future media leaders into teams, paired with veteran industry mentors who competed by preparing an entire campaign and comprehensive media strategy in response to a real client brief within a matter of days. 

Acute pressure, unforgiving deadlines, sleepless nights, and the need to navigate team dynamics are difficult enough. Compounding these by the challenges of a complex brief is even trickier.

The brief 

In this year’s brief, SC wanted to target new clients for its international wealth management offering and grow its share with corporate and institutional clients. Yet, in many of its key markets, SC was not the primary bank and ran into intense competition from local institutions, which tend to be more familiar locally.

Without the same level of presence within each market as local banks or the media budgets of competitors, how can SC reassure customers and grow local familiarity and recognition of its wealth products while not losing sight of its strong international network but underscoring it? 

Teams were asked to help affluent individuals and financial decision-makers understand why banking with SC has inherent benefits by fostering familiarity through a strategy that maximises every media dollar spent. 

“The brief was an ambitious and challenging one with clear objectives to increase familiarity with Standard Chartered as a bank, showcase our expertise in wealth management and reinforce the perception of our strong international network across dynamic markets,” says Shiv Taneja, director of global brand marketing at Standard Chartered.  

Responding to challenge 

The young MediaWorks delegates set to work under what many later described as a “pressure cooker” environment, facing a severe time crunch to get all the work done.  

“We had two days for the whole presentation, and we needed to work with people we never met before,” said Truc Hoang from Publicis Media Vietnam. “It's challenging to work together with multiple styles and cultures, give a rushed deadline.” 

Interestingly, some of the biggest assets within the various teams also provided some of the biggest challenges. Nearly all spoke of the wonderfully diverse teams from 11 different Asian markets that had to overcome language barriers while not only expressing ideas but also in executing them. 

“It's contradictory,” noted Geetika Kalra of Initiative Singapore. “Diversity is the most loved and challenging for me. Challenging to understand and make people understand each other's ideas and thoughts within crunched time. Also unbalanced diversity in the skills of each team to be able to win a pitch.”  

To help the teams along, delegates were given sessions with the client and partners to clarify the brief and get a deeper understanding of their products.  

“We were impressed by how the teams managed to clearly understand the complexities of the challenges outlined in the brief, uncover interesting consumer insights backed by data, craft a strategy with a point of view and propose creative media activation ideas,” says Amelia Tan, associate director of global brand marketing at Standard Chartered. 

The winning pitch  

Ultimately though, one team would win over the client – Team Manju led by mentor Julien Courant, COO of Omnicom Media Group Vietnam. They did so with a strong impression on day one by bouncing off their early strategy ideas off the client and taking in feedback in what was ultimately a complex media strategy that involved everything from social media influencers to financial publications to out of home. 

"They provided the most interesting identification of the target audience defining them as cultural innovators and we as a jury could see quite clearly that their strategy linked to their identification of audience and gave us a new lens of looking at potential clients," explains MediaWorks chair Amrita Randhawa. "Then in every media tactic that they chose they followed through on underscoring heritage and modernity, sparking curiosity and connecting with cultural innovators."

One of the symbols of SC's idea and strategy to strike the right tones in balancing its heritage and modernity was an idea to create a Bridgerton spin-off film to try to emerge from the “ocean of sameness” that most bank ads face. While SC's marketers appreciated the nod to heritage and modernity, the drama wasn't a perfect fit, given its time period setting with a cast and plot that strays somewhat from the ideals of stability and strength and the international network that the institution stood for, so some adaptations to the idea were needed.

But ultimately, by responding well to feedback, the team was able to bring forward a plan that could be adapted with many possibilities and partnerships to reach SC's aims. 

Chloe Chua, SC’s manager of global brand marketing said Manju “demonstrated a thorough understanding of the challenge and carried their strategy through to ideas cohesively, well backed with data and a clear rationale. They presented with flair and proposed bold and creative ideas that showcases Standard Chartered’s unique global network and capabilities.” 

Team Manju