The materials were previously provided by individual suppliers, so the HH Global contract is intended to bring consistent brand control, colour management and environmental management, while reducing costs.
“This is for high net worth brochure work, very short run but high-quality pieces, welcome packs, introduction to product packs and then retail branch POS materials for example," said Kevin Dunckley, chief digital officer and executive board sponsor. “We’ll also be fulfilling internal print, so HR and IT documents. It’s absolutely not transactional; that’s not part of what we do.”
He added that a large part of the contract involves digital media innovation, so seeing where certain communications might work better as electronic media.
“HSBC wants to take the correct demographic to a more digital communication experience. But for those that are maybe more traditional, where they like a more tactile marketing piece, we’ll be developing that to make it more impactful, making it less wordy for example,” said Dunckley.
While execution of such email, AR, invisible watermarking and NFC campaigns isn’t part of the $50m contract, HH Global is hoping it will be given a “fair chance” to deliver these, reported Dunckley.
He added that HH Global is hoping to work with HSBC’s current UK marketing collateral provider St Ives, to introduce electronic communications innovations here.
“We discussed with HSBC recently to ask, if there was a digital element we thought could be introduced to the UK too, how does that work? And they said if it’s your idea ideally we’d like you to work with the incumbent company in the UK,” said Dunckley.
The Americas and Asia Pacific regions contract is for 24 countries, including three markets in Latin America, two in North America and 19 across Asia Pacific, including India.
Different communications strategies will be deployed according to each different country’s requirements, said Dunckley.
“It’s been really interesting to see how differently things are done in the different countries,” he said. “In HSBCs in Latin America there’s very much a waiting room mentality; the customer is there for half an hour to 45 minutes, so there’s a huge POS opportunity for the banks.”
He added: “This is about making the communication more relevant and on brand, but also finding out which segment in each country wants to be communicated with in which way.”
