The Publicis-created campaign for Citibank focuses on human truths to give the bank and its cards a more personal image and build a lasting emotional connection between consumers and the brand.
The three TV commercials, for which media planning and buying were handled by MEC, use touching stories based on the universal themes of love, marriage and family, and the strapline ‘Let’s get it done’ to emphasise how the bank is able to help people in everyday life and in turn give happiness to loved ones.
The three TV commercials, for which media planning and buying were handled by MEC, use touching stories based on the universal themes of love, marriage and family, and the strapline ‘Let’s get it done’ to emphasise how the bank is able to help people in everyday life and in turn give happiness to loved ones.
The first spot shows a young man going about his daily business with thumb and index finger mysteriously set in a ring shape, shaking hands with a bemused executive and mistakenly ordering three iced coffees for himself in a café.
He later sleeps with his fingers taped in position. The reason for his odd behaviour later becomes clear when he buys a ring using a Citibank card and proposes to his girlfriend.
The second spot features a mother and father who use their Citibank card to buy a succession of increasingly large robots to keep up with their son’s growth, after he asks whether his new robot will grow up like he does. A third has a teenager thoughtfully replacing his father’s beloved scratched LP from a vintage record shop.
A source, who declined to be named, explained that Citibank hoped to show the thought behind a gift as being more important than the gift itself, and to project itself as a bank that understood the human element behind money.
“Sailing on a yacht to watch the sunset isn’t achievable for everyone,” the source said. “We wanted to build stories that were plausible, witty, entertaining, touching and real, as opposed to the overly exaggerated, dramatised, usual bank ads out there.”
The source noted that while the advertising campaign was initially aimed at the Hong Kong market, it was filmed in Shanghai, using mainland actors and directed by Austrian Marco Kalantari, in order to avoid a “Hong Kong-centric image”.
“These stories unite us all, rather than concentrating on the differences that divide us,” the source said.