HOW CHANGING ONE WORD LED TO A 400% INCREASE IN NEW ACCOUNTS

THE CHALLENGE
Australians love going overseas. Over 1.5 million choose to holiday abroad every year. Yet exclusive research for Money, by comparison website Mozo, found that an Australian traveller could spend up to $385 more in fees and charges depending on which bank they chose.
HSBC had launched the Everyday Global Account – a fee-free, an-in-one, 10 currency holding account five years earlier. In 2023, armed with this new fact, we chose to change one word in how we marketed the account, looking to drive specific increases in:
• accounts.
• foreign exchange turnover,
• new foreign exchange users, and
• overall brand awareness.
THE IDEA
Our strategy was brutally simple: we changed one word – we added travel. And then rebuilt our media and advertising focus around that. Strategically, we looked at the human behaviour of travel:
• planning a holiday
• getting ready for your holiday
• on your way to your holiday
• making the most of your holiday
We then encircled our key audience at those significant moments. Our media buy incorporated International Airports, Radio, Spotify, BVOD, YouTube, an International Film Festival, SBS –Tour de France, Concrete Playground (travel content), Paid Search, Native, Programmatic Display, Social (FB, IG, TikTok, Pinterest) and UBER.
When it came to execution, we tapped into the need state at each travel moment. From planning to packing to being on your way to showing the difference the HSBC Everyday Global Account makes on holiday.
THE RESULTS
It always seems obvious in hindsight. But changing one word dramatically lifted the uptake of the HSBC Everyday Global Account across every key metric.
One word drove an increase in:
• new accounts on owned channels by 400%
• foreign exchange transactions by 115%
• active new foreign exchange customers by 15%
• brand awareness by 119%
• search volume with our travel-related keywords up by 102%
and traffic up by 78%.
Travel. It was one word that proved to be the biggest increase in account growth in five years.