2016 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

As an international bank, HSBC is one of the few links expats have to their home country. Expats use money transfers to pay loans, mortgages or simply to support family back in their home countries.

The Brief

We needed an ad to increase awareness that you can always transfer money back home with HSBC, whether at a branch or with online banking.

How the final design was conceived

Most international money transfers, currency exchange or any related services use flags as prominent visual shorthand for different currencies. To convey that HSBC offers 24-hour international money transfers, we noticed that many flags include stars, suns and moons. By simply cropping and showing parts of the flags, we arranged them to show the movement of the sun, the moon and stars from sunrise to sundown and back again.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

While it's too soon to tell the results, the design is a breakthrough in the way HSBC can communicate about money transfers. The use of flags to not only talk about national currencies but to show the 24-hour availability of the service is a great visual shorthand that HSBC plans on using again.