Case study: SWISSQUOTE Online Trading

Client: SWISSQUOTE
Patric Pop's role: Concept, Creative Direction, Illustration, Copywriting

Situation:

With customers no longer actively trading during the financial crisis, revenue for SWISSQUOTE was dwindling and came to a near standstill. With no revenue and under financial pressure, the agency-of-record was threatened to loose the account if the numbers were not met in a quick turnaround.

TaskS:

The agency-of-record hired me to prevent their largest client’s marketing budget being moved to another company. The tasks on hand involved various parameters defined by marketing.

• Stimulate transactions, hence generating cash flow.

• Rapid Growth, despite being within a recession.

• Communicate on their low-cost trading fees.

• Communicate the newly and officially obtained status as private bank by the Swiss Banking Commission.

• Moving away from their campaign visual (a man running across a bridge, symbolising financial freedom) and which had been used over and over.

KPI:

• Attract 10’000 new clients within 12 months.

• In order to become a client, each new client had to pay in a bare minimum of CHF 100.-

• The agency would be evaluated upon the success of this mission.
  

Briefing:

• Communicate on the low-cost trading via SWISSQUOTE’s trading platform.

• Communicate on the ease of use of the trading platform.
  For inexperienced newbies it offered also tutorials.

• Create a 360° campaign that could be easily translated in four languages (DE, FR, IT, ENG).

• Campaign mechanism needed to work for diverse media supports:
  - classic media such as OOH, prints, flyers, packaging, and stands at fairs.
  - digital media: animated online ad banners and for digital ad screens in public transportation, as well as for sponsoring TV-content.

• Appeal to 2 different segments:
  - do-it-yourself hobby traders with little capital to “play”
  - professional fund managers, who use the platform to trade large numbers at lowest costs and who compete with established firms.

• Compatible with the brand’s corporate identity and more so featuring the brand’s unique colour.

Actions:

No one wants to spend more money than needed, particularly when it comes to making money!
SWISSQUOTE offered a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) that was enabling people with limited capital to also trade at the different stock exchanges at the lowest costs.

My Concept

By disrupting the traditional banking structures and their prohibitive trading commissions on each trade, SWISSQUOTE inadvertently launched a democratisation process in the financial world. Regular people suddenly had access to tools that professionals use.

This made me reflect on the role of capitalism and society.
On one hand there was capitalism that needed to be communicated with a strong USP. On the other hand, i knew that only a brand marketing campaign standing out from the rest would be sufficient to respond to the challenge given by the client to their agency-of-record. Finally, I found the most disruptive and surprising element, the total opposite of the capitalism, in form of socialism.

My Solution: Testimonial campaign with CHé Guevara

Moving away from the stock-image quality of the faceless man running over the bridge, my concept gave the campaign a well-known face to identify with.

What could create more impact than the image of someone like Ernesto « Ché » Guevara, fighting capitalism as opposed to traditional bank’s interest of creating wealth?

Paired with his memorable quote “Be realistic. Ask for the impossible”, the image of this socialist in a financial communication campaign would stand out from everything seen so far in the financial sector.

To soften impact and to communicate everything that the trading platform has to offer, other testimonials included
Salvador Dalì, Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, Josphine Baker or Enzo Ferrari. Each accompanied by their own highly memorable quotes like Dalì’s “Have no fear of perfection. You will never reach it.”

How to Deal successfully with problems

Image rights for late celebrities are usually handled by their trust foundation. Costs for usage of their images in international communication campaigns are in the tens of thousands. The client was not ready to shell out that much for this campaign and considered going for the runner-up concept.

As I wholeheartedly believed in the efficience of the concept, I had to come up rapidly with a solution to being able to show also the celebrities next to their quotes.

Using Intellectual Property Laws to your advantage

My research lead me to research intellectual property laws for imagery and to talk to specialised IP lawyers.
By creating my own artistic interpretation of the commonly known portraits with graphic treatments, I managed to respect all IP laws and hence bypass any monetary claims from the image trusts.
The way I structured the creative imagery made it possible to use the raw format as base for both all print and digital media versions.

my actions I Took:

• Identifying the brand’s marketing strategy’s USP, research and understand the target groups’ pains
  

• Convince with rational arguments both, the agency’s management and the client to go with this bold concept.
  

• Concept creation of the communication campaign
  

• Identifying the legal loophole in the intellectual property laws, getting everything approved by IP lawyers

  • Create an artistic interpretation of the celebrities' most famous portrayals to prevent any copyright infringements
    

• Copywriting the claim « Discover the leader in you »

  • copywriting all German content

  • briefing the French copywriter and all translators
    

• Reviewing with the media agency the media budget for optimizing the ROI
  

• Directing all external suppliers:

  • directing the printers of OOH, of brochureware

  • directing the motion graphics designers for digitally animated content

Results:

This communication campaign was welcomed by the Swiss public with a lot of interest and struck a nerve with potential new customers. The KPI of the requested 10’000 new accounts within 12 months was rapidly surpassed.
As a result, the customer base of SWISSQUOTE grew by 15K+ new accounts in only 9 months.

mission accomplished.
the Solutions created by Patric Pop delivered measurable results.