UOB's massive brand refresh with regional campaign 'Right by you' launches

UOB has unveiled a refreshed logo and seal mark as part of a brand refresh its purpose - Building the future of ASEAN: For the people and businesses within, and connecting with, ASEAN. With the sharpened UOB Purpose, the primary colour palette featured in the logo has been refreshed to reflect the bank’s progressiveness. Defined as Sure Blue and ASEAN Red, the brighter primary blue and red colour palette talks to UOB’s Asian heritage and Southeast Asian roots, and signifies confidence and optimism. It also amplifies the bank’s ambition to build a brighter future for this region.

Meanwhile, the seal mark is a contemporary interpretation of a traditional seal design with modern-day Chinese characters. With its unique style and presence, the UOB Seal Mark complements the UOB logo and enhances the bank's corporate identity across communication materials and corporate stationery. The four Chinese characters (大华银行) in the Seal Mark represents the Bank’s name expressed in Simplified Chinese.

According to UOB during the launch of the new brand, it also added depth to its secondary graphic, signifying the deepening of its strategic presence in ASEAN by bringing together a fresh visual identity to form a distinct UOB brand. This serves as an inspiration to move upward and forward into the future.

The bank explained that the brand refresh is not just a re-branding exercise or a marketing campaign. Instead, it signals UOB's strategic intent to intensify its focus and investment in the region to develop and help realise the potential of the people in ASEAN. It also reinforces UOB’s commitment to facilitate economic flows within and with ASEAN to support businesses across generations.

The brand refresh also features an integrated regional brand campaign "Doing right by you" to showcase UOB's transformation to be future-ready for its customers and its people in the new banking era, as well as new apparel. UOB declined to comment on the monetary value of the brand refresh.

The campaign will roll out through a series of brand films and ads on TV, print, digital and OOH channels that cover airports. The two key messages in the campaign - "You are unique" and "One bank for ASEAN" - show how UOB aims to deliver on personalisation and connectivity respectively, to demonstrate its promise of doing "Right by You".

The "You are unique" film series, in particular, illustrates how each customer has their unique needs, preferences and goals, which drives the bank to create progressive solutions and services that are catered to serve them in a way that suits them. This includes its all-in-one UOB TMRW app which seeks to deliver customised engagement with each customer.

The regional brand campaign will begin on 15 September across seven markets namely Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Mainland China Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. BBH was involved in the brand refresh and campaign.

Janet Young, UOB's head of group channels and digitalisation and group strategic communications and brand, said during the launch that the new branding is "a great reflection of the transformation" that UOB has been doing to invest in ASEAN. "It really reinforces the commitment that we have across all the networks, not just for consumers but also for businesses in the last three to four years. This reflects the amount of connectivity that the businesses within ASEAN have. We are also expanding ourselves, providing that connectivity and ability to personalise for our consumers," she explained.

She added that the rebranding sharpens UOB's purpose, especially since its acquisition of Citi's consumer banking franchises in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam earlier this year. The bank is also using this opportunity to double down on three strategic areas - connectivity, personalisation, and sustainability - to deliver on its purpose.

"We want all these messages to come up even stronger, reinforcing what we have been investing in our transformation, and that this message helps to boost the customers' experience and the value they get out of working with UOB," she added.

How UOB practices customer-centricity

The bank walks the talk in customer-centricity by leveraging analytics and technology to drive personalised relationships and interactions across channels. According to its ASEAN Consumer Sentiment Survey 2021, the bank found that consumers have increased expectations surrounding simple product solutions, seamless online to offline engagement, as well as intuitive and transparent features. Thus, it pivoted to digital and omnichannel based on customers' preferences and used AI and machine learning for timely and contextual offers. 

This resulted in a 26% increase in digitally engaged customers in the region, 40% of who are omnichannel customers. It also saw more than three times in customer response rates.

Young said its efforts to listen to customers and adapt to their preferences is what makes them different from other brands. According to her, UOB is a big believer of the Net Promoter Score. "We embed that in our customer journey design, not just digital but also human experiences because we want to bring both digital and the human touch to our entire offering," she said.

Separately, with digitalisation and immersive experiences being all the rage these days, Young said she is excited about the possibilities that Web3.0 will bring about and what it means for them. "That is one of the key trends that we have observed. Consumers want to know how they can integrate both physical and immersive experiences," she added. Aside from digitalisation and Web3.0, Young also cited the trend of decarbonisation and sustainability. This is also an area which the brand has been pushing for, especially in the area of its offerings including U-Solar. 

Wee Ee Cheong, deputy chairman and CEO of UOB, said: "We have always believed in the potential of ASEAN, with its favourable demographics and resilient fundamentals. As ASEAN re-starts its engine of growth post-pandemic, it is timely for us to unveil our sharpened purpose and brand refresh."

Meanwhile, Jacquelyn Tan, head of group personal financial services at UOB, said understanding consumers through a combination of data and relationship-led insights is the foundation for UOB to deliver on its promise to do right by its customers. "We believe that because every customer is unique, they should have a personalised experience with UOB, whether it is engaging with us digitally, through our relationship managers or physically at our branches. This is what drives us to consistently sharpen our approach to develop new solutions and services that are relevant to our customers and their ever-changing lifestyle and life stage needs," she added.

Echoing the bank’s ongoing transformation of its physical network, the new UOB Privilege Banking Centre at Orchard was also designed to offer a holistic experience to customers, with spaces to facilitate deeper conversations and interactive engagements around wealth and wellness solutions.

At the same time, UOB also introduced an extensive new range of UOB apparel to coincide with the brand refresh. The new apparel is a collection of mix-and-math outfits, to reflect the new multi-skilled roles of its employees at the branches. Designed by Odile Benjamin, founder and CEO of Estair Private, the new apparel incorporates inclusivity and diversity, offering branch ambassadors the versatility and flexibility to dress according to their roles and preference. Starting 15 September, all UOB branch ambassadors in Singapore will be wearing their new apparel chosen by them.

Janet Young, head of group channels and digitalisation and group strategic communications and brand, UOB, explained that to cater to the changing and unique needs of its customers and as part of the bank's ongoing transformation, it has progressively made changes to its UOB branches and wealth management centres, redesigning them for customer engagement and advisory, such that deeper conversations around customers' needs, beyond banking, can take place.

"The changes to our branches are in tandem with our people transformation where we have consistently invested in programmes and training, and have already upskilled more than 90% of our branch ambassadors in Singapore and across the region. This has enabled our people to deliver a personalised and enhanced customer experience to our customers – both individuals and businesses," she added.

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