HSBC Platinum Credit Card was re-launched in the UAE with a new proposition – ‘what type are you?’ The launch campaign consisted of a multitude of elements – press, outdoor, virals, website, direct mailers, redesigned welcome kits etc. To reinforce our “type” concept with our relevant audience (middle and top management of the corporate world), we had to come up with a direct mailer that was about the people we were talking to, something they would treasure, and see over and over again.

We identified and wrote out some hundreds of types of people and picked the best.

Our target audience for this exercise was the top people in the corporate world. Most of them have a flair for art. Hence we found a relevance that was a mix of serious, funny and beautiful with our ‘type’ concept. We involved more than ten artists/illustrators/designers onboard and gave each of them a ‘type’ concept and the freedom to interpret it in their own way. We then made a beautiful postcard book out of all the interpretations that was sent out.

The book is presently a collector’s item. (More so perhaps because it is not sold anywhere.) We have had innumerable requests for copies from across the world as the word (and images) started spreading. About the response – it was more than expected - of the 300 books we distributed in the first week of the exercise, we received almost about 200 calls inquiring about the new offerings of the HSBC Platinum Credit Card.