Client: Wells Fargo
Language: English
Region: New York City, National
Media: TV, Online, Print, Event, OOH, Social Media
Role: Art Direction; Concept Development
Wells Fargo has deep ties with the Asian American segment, offering meaningful financial products and services over 25 years. And being one of the fastest growing immigrant populations, the affluent and financially astute South Asian community is a sub-segment that Wells Fargo wants to deepen relationship with.
Amidst the vast diversity of festivals and celebrations, Diwali – The Festival of Lights, the one festival that is celebrated with the same spirit across India. Instead of following the brief and creating a festive ad campaign to share the joy of festivity, we wanted to make the most out of a small campaign, to make an impact to the community. To us, this is a great opportunity to connect at a deeper level with the South Asian consumer during the popular Diwali festival; To tell the community that we understand and we care. We want the community to know Wells Fargo is here to help customers to celebrate with relevant products & services and enable them to make a difference in their community, to share the true meaning of both of the holiday, and also to fulfill the essences of the brand promise – “Together we’ll go far”.
After carefully investigate the habit of the community, we introduced a relevant product “ExpressSend”, as Diwali is a time where holiday spending, gifting, and giving back to the community are prevalent. Gifting generally is in the form of sweets, clothes and cash. It is especially true for South Asian American community to gift money to family back home. Since the essence of this holiday is about showing gratitude and sharing joy, a partnership with a non-profit organization to give back to the community seems to make perfect sense. From sharing joy, Spreading smiles became the direction to move forward with, this is where Operation Smile India is chosen, after-all, what is better than spreading smiles both figural and literally. The anchor becomes making a difference through donations for surgical operations.
With the partnership with Operation Smile India, the Diwali promotion of Wells Fargo donates $3 to Operation Smile for every ExpressSend money transfer to India, up to $50,000 donation is created.
To add to the grandeur of the celebration, the team and I recommened bringing the celebration to the iconic Times Square with a major sponsorship at the Diwali at Times Square event. This took the idea beyond advertising and joined the community in their celebration at the grassroot level. As part of the integrate campaign, Wells Fargo took over the Times Square Nasdaq and Reuters Billboard Screens during the celebration. A digital “Diya Lighting Ceremony is placed, the lighting of the ceremonial lamp is considered as an auspicious practice in the Asian Indian culture. The flame of the digital Diya on the Reuters Screen grew taller as more photos/messages were posted using #DiwaliSmiles. The results were monitored real time. The emcee of the event encouraged the crowd at the event to post more and more of their photos on Facebook, Twitter, Instragram, etc. The final countdown of the last 10 photos propelled the flame to reach its maximum height and that kicked off the Bollywood Star Studded Concert.
The Result?
It became Wells Fargo’s iconic Asian Indian Celebratory Campaign that made waves among customers and received recognition from South Asian Media partners.
- Remittance growth in transactions (volume) increased by 41% vs. year ago.
- Sales of new agreements increased by 26% vs. year before.
- Total $ volumes increased by 28% vs. 2013.
- Average $ transfer per agreement increased by 13% vs. year ago.
- More than 1/2 million consumers turned up at Times Square to celebrate Diwali with Wells Fargo (20% increase YOY).
- Social media/hashtag performance (#DiwaliSmiles) in a 48 hour period – 100,000 impressions. It had a high engagement rate (2.3%), volume of engagement and impressions.
- Overall media impressions – 181 million+, picked up by both AI and GM media due to the unique nature of the campaign.
This campaign also won silver with 3AF creative campaign of the year 2015, as well as 2015 ANA Multicultural “Significant Results” category. Most importantly we could facilitate the surgeries for over 200 children and changes their lives forever! And Wells Fargo continued it’s partnership with Operation Smile India in the following year.
