2013 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

Business Objective: • Allocate one billion dirhams ($278 million) within 7 months of launch • Increase New to bank Customers of fund from 50% to 70% • Emirati portfolio: Increase allocation of fund to Emirati owned businesses from 18% t0 25% Results: ONLY FOUR MONTHS INTO THE LAUNCH : • 70% HAS ALREADY BEEN ALLOCATED TO BUSINESSES IN THE UAE • 79% OF FUND HAS BEEN ALLOCATED TO NTB CUSTOMERS (12% higher than expected) • 30% OF FUND HAS BEEN ALLOCATED TO EMIRATI BUSINESSES (20% higher than expected)

Creative Execution

In order to trigger our audiences’ interest, we had to find a way to send a message that we were sure wouldn’t be missed.. HSBC’s strategy was simple and seamless. Be seen. Be loud. Be memorable. If this had to be a success, we had to speak their language. The business language – Numbers. We chose to make headline news with an army of zeros. The ten digits in the number 1,000,000,000 were consistently associated with the HSBC SME Fund and surfaced every select media channel. We used these ten digits as the identity of the fund across paid, owned and earned media with a contextual selection of offline, online and ambient touch points to target our audience. The Power of Zeros would only be effective in a disruptive setting. Keeping true to our strategy, being selective in our placement was critical to ensure our message was hard-to-miss.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

While various reports suggest that the upper SME segment is fuelling growth of the economy, the reality is that businesses are finding it more difficult to identify sustainable growth with working capital restrictions. HSBC CMB has brought back the third edition of the annual SME Fund with a larger sum to offer businesses as capital to grow in the UAE and abroad. Corporate Officers and Directors are key decision makers in matters of working capital and business growth. As they make up the core target audience of our B2B proposition, These ‘C-suites’ are hard to impress. The key insight that led to the big idea is that the C-suite pays attention to only what matters. And what matters to them in presence of clutter are the headlines. The idea was to “Make headline news using the power of zeros to dominate targeted business channels through a disruptive placement strategy”