Metro Bank was the first new bank to open on UK highstreets for over 150 years. They were the original banking revolution. Nine years on, however, amidst the launch of a flurry of fintech disruptors, Metro Bank needed to rediscover the magic in their brand.

In a category where human interaction was being taken out of every touchpoint, Metro Bank was innovating people back into banking; with stores open 7-days a week from 8am-8pm, filled with genuinely lovely colleagues. It’s no surprise they consistently win awards for customer service. 

Our brand defining idea uncovered their most compelling point of difference: their people. But not just any people - Metro Bank were People-People.

So, we put their diverse and characterful People-People front and centre of the campaign, and celebrated them in the communities they served.

Working with large production companies and in-house departments, we created a number of assets. Most notably a huge OOH and DOOH presence that was contextualised to the 65 stores nationwide, their communities, and time-specific ads which allowed us to advertise when other banks’ doors were shut. Our 30” film ran across local cinema and geo-targeted digital.

The work was very well received by both customers and colleagues. The impact was immediate and Metro Bank’s share price rose more than 10% in the first seven days of the campaign. As a direct result of the campaign, consideration was up 5% and familiarity up by 20%. Current account openings were up 39% YOY. And most importantly, the People-People of Metro Bank found new belief in the challenger role they have in communities.

And it didn’t stop there. In 2020, we helped Metro Bank with their first B2B campaign, the launch of their Business Banking Account…. against the backdrop of the pandemic.

With lockdown drastically changing customer needs, we built a campaign to appeal to an audience of small business owners who didn’t even exist yet.

We created a proposition that centred around Metro Bank’s amazing Local Business Managers who could provide these new entrepreneurs the kind of personal support other banks would reserve for their most profitable business owners. The campaign prompted a 58% increase in new Business Bank Account applications, but perhaps even more important was the increase of 3.2% in brand perception that Metro Bank was ‘a brand for people like me’, over 3 x the industry norm.