Title	#ZEROREGRETS
Brand	HSBC
Product/Service	HSBC
Category	F04. Use of Original Composition for a Brand or Campaign
Entrant	WE ARE SOCIAL London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	WE ARE SOCIAL London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production	FRIEND London, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
Cairen Harry	We Are Social	Senior Account Director
Laura Macri	We Are Social	Senior Account Manager
Alison Bracegirdle	We Are Social	Creative Director
Victoria Kalogerou	We Are Social	Creative
Ross McTaggart	We Are Social	Senior Writer
Sarah Hecks	We Are Social	Associate Editorial Director
Hannah Kingsbury	We Are Social	Senior Project Manager
Casper Vahlgren	We Are Social	Junior Strategist
Caroline Lucas-Garner	We Are Social	Strategy Director
Alex Tromp	HSBC	Campaigns Manager
Jag Sharma	HSBC	Social Media Marketing Manager
Rakhee Parmar	HSBC	Campaigns Manager
Charis Marr	HSBC	Senior Campaigns Manager
Ryan Daly	Mindshare	Paid Social Account Manager
Stella Scott	Freelance	Director
Siobhán Daly	FRIEND	Executive Producer

The Campaign

The creative idea was to produce a music-focused cross-channel campaign, called Zero Regrets, with the aim being to encourage young people in the UK about to start higher education or training to have the confidence to take on every opportunity available to them, so they can reach their full potential and have no regrets later on in life. To bring this idea to life, we created a music video featuring award winning grime artist Lady Leshurr, and featuring real students and apprentices experiencing their zero regrets moments by pursuing their passions and the moments that would help shape their future. And not only did Lady Leshurr star in the music video, but she also wrote the lyrics, which everyone fell in love with as soon as we heard them. Furthermore, the music video was also produced in partnership with real students and apprentices, who helped capture and edit the footage.

Creative Execution

The social campaign launched on August 17th (A-Level results day) with an announcement video from Lady Leshurr on her Facebook and Snapchat, teasing that she was working with HSBC on a music video. The full music video was released on Snapchat mid September as a swipe-up ad, in time for Freshers’ Week, along with three 15” edits on Facebook and Instagram. Lady Leshurr also posted to her own Snapchat with a message to her fans directing them to watch the video on HSBC’s channels. The launch was also preceded by a set of product-focused, direct response carousel ads on Facebook and Instagram, which highlighted the £60 Amazon.co.uk gift card and 12 month Amazon Prime Student subscription offered with the HSBC Student Current Account. All assets were shot in vertical, keeping the fact that mobile is the go-to destination for social.

The campaign raised widespread awareness of HSBC and its Student Account. On Facebook, 1.6 million people engaged with the campaign, generating over 53 million impressions, reaching a targeted audience of 9 million. Once people had watched the first three seconds of content they were hooked, with start to end completion rates on Facebook at an impressive 62% Lady Leshurr’s announcement post and significantly above average for the music video cutdowns. On Snapchat, the video content was viewed over 1.5 million times, generating 23.4 million impressions. We saw a high average watch times of 27 seconds on Snapchat, once people swiped up to the full length music video. Most importantly, the cross-campaign exceeded expectations when it came to business objectives. It drove a significant number of Student Account applications with a 17% YOY in total Student applications from 01 July – 20 September.

We created an original music video featuring award winning grime artist Lady Leshurr.

We wanted a campaign that actually helped students discover what they were capable of while at university. The social insight that we unearthed was that, through the knowledge students/apprentices accumulate and the experiences they go through at university, they begin to understand what they are capable of and how those capabilities will shape them and their future. However, finance fears compound the pressure to make the formative years count and they don’t feel there is allowance to spend as much time on socialising and taking advantage of the other opportunities they have available outside the classroom. This took us to the strategic proposition of ‘learn to live a life unrestricted’, which aimed to inspire and enable our audience to not let finance fears hold them back from fulfilling their potential and to live a life with zero regrets.