On your marks, get set…cliché

After an 18-month “deep-dive”, hundreds of client interviews, and gathering suggestions from among its 85,000 employees, Standard Chartered Bank has updated its ‘Here for good’ campaign with a new global message, suggesting the bank will always have more work to do to become better.  With this, Ad Nut would agree.

The ‘Good enough will never change the world’ campaign launches today in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and the UK with a series of ads featuring people with incredible accomplishments because they wouldn’t settle for ‘good enough.’

And with that as your tagline, the pressure to deliver blockbuster creative is on.  The new film Champions starts with a race between the world’s sprinting legends. It’s an all-star lineup of US and Jamaican runners with little attachment to Stanchart’s key markets, but that’s irrelevant since the message is universal. And who cares when we see the sprinters at their starting blocks and the swelling music begins, that swelling music that Ad Nut swears was heard a million times during the Olympics.  

“This is my time” Usain Bolt says, “but I know there will be another."  Bolt is looking at the young boy in the crowd who will likely overtake his records in a few years time. Ad Nut can see the parallels here as Stanchart bank might look over at the young fintech firm working out of a shed somewhere that's poised to disrupt the traditional bank and leave it in the dust. Wait, no, that’s not the message, is it? Never mind, let's keep watching.

Boom goes the starting gun, dissolve goes the logo and… never settle for good enough? This one settles for clichés throughout. Ad Nut might also add this gem of a quote from the campaign's supporting material from Usain Bolt: “It is not enough to dream big – you need to push through barriers to realise your dreams.” Yikes!  How about pushing through even a thesaurus to shake that phrase up a bit?

Perhaps Stanchart’s other film featuring Liverpool FC manager Jürgen Klopp will be more original?  It is. Klopp is not giving canned answers. His speech is natural. This is better. He’s walking and talking… through an empty locker room… then an empty stadium.  Where is everyone?  He’s talking about hard work and constant improvement.  But he’s just staring at the empty seats.  Daydreaming never changed the world either.  Where’s Klopp in action?  Now Ad Nut is starting to miss the swelling music….

While Stanchart has a strong history of involvement in sport and wellness, these early videos aren’t cutting it for AdNut.  The bank promises that follow-up videos will tell more stories of clients and companies overcoming obstacles and not settling.  Let’s hope that the creative involved doesn’t either.

Ad Nut is a surprisingly literate woodland creature that for unknown reasons has an unhealthy obsession with advertising. Ad Nut gathers ads from all over Asia and the world for your viewing pleasure, because Ad Nut loves you. Check out Ad Nut's Advertising Hall of Fame.