HUNTINGTON NATIONAL BANK (HNB): WELCOME

Bob Jesenovec, Jan 2, 2018

HUNTINGTON NATIONAL BANK (HNB):

WELCOME!

Situation:
In 2013, Huntington National Bank embarked on a re-branding campaign with the goal to become a “welcoming” bank.

Challenge:
To design and launch a low-budget, yet socially impactful campaign that would both, establish HNB as the “welcoming” bank within the community and generate awareness to increase their customer base.

Strategy:
Leaderpromos determined that to be successful and impact the community en masse, an interactive, high visibility, social media friendly strategy would be needed. Simply updating the same old tactics that financial institutions had used for decades just wouldn’t cut it.

In a corporate landscape where nothing stood out from the crowd, something completely new and original was needed to get the audience’s attention - and the vehicle to represent this campaign had to be new and original as well. With that as motivation, Leaderpromos moved to create an original, custom-design, pen featuring the new HNB branding.

Every aspect of the pen, from the barrel, to the clip to the tip, were all brought together to create a new, uniquely one-of-a-kind pen that had not been seen before.

To further establish HNB as the friendly bank, Leaderpromos also decided to abandon the traditional practice of financial institutions chaining their pens to desks and instead, encouraged patrons to take the pens with them. This simple, yet brilliantly effective concept of giving the pens to anyone, allowed the campaign to quickly spread through the entire community.

Outcome:
As the custom pens found their way throughout the entire Columbus and central Ohio community, interest and demand for them greatly exceeded the projected expectations. In answer to this development, and not wanting to lose any momentum the campaign had generated, Leaderpromos proposed a sustainable distribution model for Huntington to use that enabled individual branches to order pens as part of a monthly allocation for special marketing needs, and not have to wait, and/or go through corporate to replenish their pen supply.

The pens prompted several regional news pieces and social media trends. The hashtag #HuntingtonPen was jump-started and invited social media users to share where they’ve seen and used the pen. The pens even turned up at competing for financial institutions!

NOTE: Any given Huntington pen has been owned by an incredible average of 42 people throughout its lifetime. To date, enough pens have been dispensed to span the entire width of the continental United States, or more than two thousand miles!