Cultural / Context information for the jury

In early-2020, Covid-19 severely crashed the U.S. stock market prompting a decline in investing sentiment. Worryingly, over 1/3 of HongKongers declared they will not invest in anything and will only maintain cash savings–an unprecedented behaviour in the financial capital of Asia. For CHARLES SCHWAB, a brokerage firm that only provides U.S. market investing for Hong Kong investors, this slump spelt disaster and was determined to turn things around. As a smaller player against HSBC, Citi, UBS and other large international banks, SCHWAB needed to uphold awareness and drive interest towards the brand during the crisis. Because in every crisis lies opportunities and with a new behaviour of self-led learning emerged, market headlines became water-cooler conversations for the self-directed investor eager to learn more. ‘Navigate the New Investing Normal’ was a culture-inspired campaign that turned trending topics into triggers to seek SCHWAB's guidance for such a perplexing yet lucrative U.S. market.

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As businesses and the market continue to shift towards a new normal, we developed an integrated campaign that turned trending topics into brand impact with OOH-transit media capturing prospects all across the city. To uncover these investing topics, we triangulated data from search behaviour, engagement of financial media news and influencer content, as well as keyword mentions on social media and forums. It used media in a strategic yet impactful way to capture the attention and create conversations among affluent self-directed investors. The executional technique and use-of-data enabled us to actively respond to market-shaping headlines in real-time. Driven primarily through OOH-transit media, our messages were creatively contextualised to the media type/location, and engagements retargeted with insight-driven content and conversion-driven advertising. We targeted affluent self-directed investors who were mainly professionals working in Central (the city’s CBD). The OOH-transit media plan focused on high traffic spots in Central where they commute daily.