Citibank SG sees marketing shuffle as Luke Tucker takes on regional role

Citibank Singapore's head of marketing, Luke Tucker (pictured left), has taken on the regional head of marketing role to spearhead marketing strategy for APAC and EMEA. At the same time, Mylene Ong (pictured right), Mastercard's director of communications for Southeast Asia, has joined Citibank Singapore as head of digital sales and marketing. Ong has a wealth of experience in the agency space, having worked at Colenso BBDO, BBH China, JWT, DraftFCB, M&C Saatchi Singapore, and TBWA\. MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out to Mastercard for comment.

Meanwhile, Tucker joined Citibank Singapore as marketing head in 2018 and oversaw retail banking, wealth management, credit cards, unsecured loans, mortgage, insurance, and mobile and digital banking. In that role, Tucker oversaw brand strategy, marketing communications, digital acquisition, the bank's existing customer engagement and commercialisation programme, as well as product launches and refreshes.

Under his leadership, his team oversaw several notable marketing campaigns such as "There's More to Wealth" and "Lead The Way". According to the bank, the "There’s More to Wealth" campaign resulted in positive shifts in brand metrics and net promoter scores throughout 2021, as well as robust new client growth. Tucker’s team also played a significant role in the successful opening of the Citi Wealth Hub last December. Before Citibank, Tucker worked at McCann Worldgroup, DDB Group Australia, Ogilvy, McDonald's, and Campbell Arnotts. 

As Citibank Singapore's head of marketing, Tucker played a role in establishing the partnership between Citi and the Museum of Ice Cream Singapore (MOIC), which was one of the media activations under Lead The Way. He told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE in a separate interview that Lead The Way aims to build a stronger association around the benefits available to Citi credit card members. Launched in October, the overall campaign was done in collaboration with Archibald Williams, ThreeSixty and Spark Foundry. 

MOIC Singapore is the first branch outside the US, bringing its creative concept and novelty to Singapore, Tucker said. At the same time, Citi is also its first financial institution partner. "The pandemic had resulted in travel restrictions, thus we wanted to give our cardmembers a unique treat to the latest attraction in town that aligns with our vision of delivering priority offers, access and leading innovation. Additionally, it is a fun and inclusive attraction for different ages, and both family and friends," he added. 

The partnership was marketed through a special ticket presale for a Halloween at The Museum event presented by Citi. The event not only allowed visitors to try a Citi-inspired blue vanilla ice cream, but also offered priority queues when one showed their Citi card. The pre-sale of MOIC tickets were communicated on Facebook and Instagram with fun teasers and launch videos that were Halloween-themed. The MOIC activation was done in partnership with Spark Foundry.

According to Tucker, its advertising communications reached about 763,000 individuals in Singapore in just nine days. Other media channels including TimeOut, AsiaOne, and Mothership also offered editorial support by sharing news of the event and pre-sale. "We still have ongoing communications and we expect this number to grow along with the good interest we are seeing for this event," Tucker explained.

Over the years, the bank has pioneered card partnerships with brands including SMRT, M1, Lazada, and Grab, as part of its goal to curate meaningful experiences for customers. With Grab, for example, the bank worked with it to enable a seamless conversion of Citi Thank You Points and Citi Miles to GrabRewards Points. Meanwhile in April this year, Citi announced that new credit card customers in Singapore will have access to digital versions of their plastic for immediate use before receiving their physical credit cards, making this a first for Citi globally. 

The birth of "Lead The Way"

Citi has no doubt built a brand name for itself globally and in Singapore. However, the bank wanted to strengthen itself and build an even strong brand voice. This led to the birth of the "Lead The Way" campaign in October, which was its first bank-wide (card or logo agnostic) campaign in more than four years. Tucker explained that the bank created differentiation and desire for a Citi credit card via an emotional connection and unique brand personality and positioning. The campaign's concept was developed off the insight that everyone likes to get ahead in life.

This, Tucker said, provides an overarching theme that builds a stronger association around the unique innovations available to Citi credit card members. Lead The Way taps into everyday moments through which Citi can empower customers to lead with confidence, arming them to step out and grasp opportunities at every turn. 

"Unlike our competitors who were leveraging on very tactical ads, our campaign brought a different side of the Citi credit card member identity – the modern urban dweller who leads a life with confidence and gets ahead in life. The campaign showcases a myriad of benefits for customers as well as creates a stronger association, recall and awareness on the innovative card features that Citi offers," Tucker explained.

Lead The Way adopts a digital-first strategy to elevate awareness, deepen engagement, and acquire new customers. Despite its heavy offline presence, Citi understood the importance of being where its target audiences are, especially for the Cards segment. At the same time, the need to be digitally skewed has been even more acute during the periods of heightened alert restrictions in Singapore, Tucker said. 

"For each of our campaigns, we have developed rich, fit-for-purpose content for specific digital and social paid media channels and platforms to ensure it is optimised for the medium. This is a combination of either duration, orientation, music, voiceovers, and subtitles, among others," he explained. 

In line with this, Citi scaled up its wealth management presence in Singapore, with high impact media and launched Hidden Riches, a digital docu-series that features six individuals and their unique perspectives towards wealth and how it makes the most of their lives. 

While key social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram are still crucial for Citi, the bank also relies on content partners such as SingSaver and influencers to help consumers understand how Citi's credit cards can add value to their daily lives in a relevant and relatable way. 

When asked about the other channels that are of priority to Citi now, Tucker explained that digital paid media can be very expensive in Singapore, as competition is rife from MNCs and large local businesses, "with deep pockets fighting for valuable share-of-voice and mind".

"Nowhere is this more potent than in the paid search channel, where we experience aggressive bidding for category and branded keywords from competitors. This has required our SEO strategy to be finetuned in an ongoing basis," he explained. Citi has also supplemented these strategies with its DMP that enables the bank to sharpen its messaging to existing customers on and off its website based on their product holding or web traffic behaviour. 

Just last week, Citigroup doubled down on the digital assets space by hiring Puneet Singhvi to lead the unit for its institutional clients group. This comes as the organisation aims to build a new digital assets unit to boost its expertise in blockchain, digital assets and digital currencies. It also plans to hire 100 staff.

Earlier this year, the bank also pulled out of 13 markets for its consumer banking operations in the Asia and EMEA regions to focus on Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE and London. The company explained in April that the restructure is part of an "ongoing strategic review" and will allow the Citi to direct investments and resources to the businesses where it has the greatest scale and growth potential. The affected markets are: Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, Bahrain, China, India, Korea, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, and Taiwan. Citigroup’s institutional clients group continue to serve clients in these markets.

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