Piraeus Bank's Online App Campaign Gets You Out of Difficult Situations

Winbank is the online banking app of Piraeus Bank – one of the biggest financial institutions in Greece. The app recently underwent a complete re-design with the goal of creating a modern, user-friendly and simple app that meets the standards of an online banking experience.  

The bank needed to raise awareness of the app overhaul, the new capabilities and services it offers to its existing customer base as well as increase app downloads from new customers. 

Considering that for a long-time brands talked about banking and finances in only very serious, staid terms that were very austere, the category was ripe to be disrupted. 

But to test that in practice? Τhat’s a different beast, since the relationship between banks and Greeks are tentative, to say the least. There is a long history of mistrust – the pinnacle being the 2008 recession, where banks were, in part, held responsible for the situation. It was, therefore, common practice for banks to avoid communicating creative work that broke what is considered appropriate and conservative. 

Despite the cultural context, the agency remained firm to the notion that while banking isn’t something Greek people want to think about a lot, it doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it. Because this is the way to transform a big, yet distant institution to a brand that people think it’s humane, approachable and friendly. 

Spanning six months, three films were launched based on the insight that the new Winbank app unties your hands and has you covered in any situation. In all three films, our protagonists - a man, a magician's assistant and Santa Clause himself - face difficulties when our main antagonist, a small child, offers help in exchange for various gifts. 

The films had a tremendous success both as a branded content but also as a piece of financial education that goes beyond the common practices of informing the public regarding the abilities of a new app.  For a relatively new campaign, it harnessed more than 100k views across social – and counting. 

The idea that no matter the situation, the app unties your hands and has you covered resonated with customers as the app successfully retained its vast customer base off over four million unique clients during the app migration. Additionally, the Winbank app’s ratings improved from 2.5 / 5 to 4.5 / 5 and now holds the no1 spot in the App Store charts under the “Finance” category.