Standard Chartered climb mobile banking peak

Maybe it was the thrill of doing something completely different. Maybe it was a way of breaking them out of the monotony of the usual Singaporean banks conservative marketing campaigns. Maybe they thought what the hell and throw caution to the wind such was their confidence in their mobile banking product….

Whatever there thought process it was a stroke of pure genius. The concept was simple. Climb Everest on the 60^th anniversary of the first every climb to the peak of Everest and test their mobile banking Breeze app’s abilities to transact at that level, not just once but several times.

Not only did this produce some fantastic and quite compelling content for their blog site of their website (if not YouTube channel, they missed a trick there) but it increased social media engagement in ways and in measures that nothing else the bank could have done bar giving away money.

The bank has added over 41,000 new Facebook ‘Likes,’ a growth rate of 47%. Their Facebook engagement rate has increased from an unremarkable 0.97% to a more impressive 2.3%. At Twitter, Standard Chartered added over 1,000 new followers, a growth rate of 6.1% in less than eight weeks. Measurable engagement for the stunt.

The stunt also created mountains (forgive me) of publicity all across Asia, where Everest is and where most of Standard Chartered’s customers are. In one fell swoop they have positioned their brand in a more daring and interesting way and they have let everyone know that their mobile banking app works anywhere in the world, even at the top of mountains.

Unlike many of these kind of stunts this one is completely relevant to the target audience and to its product. Not only was this idea cost effective as the ROI would have been paid a hundred times over with publicity and increased social media engagement but it gave Standard Chareterd outstanding content and brand positioning too. Ticks all the boxes.

If only they could actually launch their benefits app The Good Life on android…surely if they can climb Everest to transact they can create an android app and not just an apple one for their Good Life App? It’s been 2 years and customers are still waiting….its seemingly quicker to climb Everest and transact than to redeem an offer on their benefits app if you’re on a Samsung!