Standard Bank: Heróis de Azul

Client.

Standard Bank

Bringing purpose to businesses. Advertising. Branding. Communication Strategy. Banking & Financial Services.

A major investment in human capital.

Standard Bank Angola promotes and honours the work of Angolan volunteers in local communities as part of its social responsibility policy. Heróis de Azul (Heroes in Blue) is a high impact health and education project that faces countless challenges every day to transform the reality of Angolans with the help of over a hundred volunteers.

Involving communities and improving their lives is essential and is part of the brand's core values.

Challenge.

For Standard Bank, success extends beyond financial activities. Involving communities and improving their lives is essential and is part of the brand's core values. With this in mind, the brand developed a social responsibility project that covers areas as diverse as health and education and aims to help the neediest communities by improving their quality of life. To this end, it relies on the collaboration of around 115 volunteers - doctors, nurses, Bank employees and health companies - totalling 22,000 hours of activity in more than 20 locations.

Standard Bank challenged us to divulge the project and move it from action to mission, making this initiative tangible through a brand and a 360º communication project to demonstrate the bank's social concern and help attract new volunteers.

Naming.

Heroes in Blue represents the role of each participant, their strength and will to transform the lives of the communities and of each individual, and the company culture of Standard Bank Angola that drives the whole project.

Campaign.

But, just like the Heroes in Blue, we also wanted to go further, honouring these volunteers who give their time to improve the lives of others without receiving anything in return. That's why we created the campaign concept ‘Values that make a difference’.

This campaign was centred on a new banknote created to represent the priceless value of the volunteers—a banknote with no monetary worth but full of artistic and emotional value, with the imprint of the volunteers and the community. In a two-month process, we created an authentic central bank note, repeating the traditional numismatic process, and we made a surprise delivery to the Heroes in Blue, thanking them for their humanism and dedication to the project and the communities.

This project was communicated through the bank's social networks, a specific website and advertising in all of the bank's branches.

Documentary.

The POS communication campaign was accompanied by the launch of the documentary ‘Heroes in Blue’. Over four days of filming, we followed the work of volunteers in the province of Luanda, between Bengo, Muxima, and Barra do Kuanza, to produce a six-minute documentary showing the doctors on their missions, reinforcing the care offered to the communities through which the mobile clinic passes.

"After ‘The Voice of Experience’, we travelled again with Standard Bank and explored its commitment to Angolan traditions and communities. This way of being resonates with us, and the result is yet another production that combines a documentary approach with advertising, which we hope will once again have a great impact on the country and around the world." Duarte Vilaça, Partner at Born

Impact.

The Heroes in Blue project has placed Standard Bank among the brands with the most significant investment in social responsibility policies in Angola. It has been recognised across borders by leading media (‘Top Ad’ on adsoftheworld.com), and it has brought on board other companies in Angola to help the project - offering medicines, logistics and much more.