Trust cannot be scripted

Brand Storytelling in Asia | Part 3 of 3:  Banking & Insurance

No category has narrower room for a story-execution gap than banking and insurance. The subject matter is someone's money and someone's health and for-profit institutions, no less. Customers do not expect altruism here. What they seek is “Will you do what you said, when I actually need you to?” 

UOB's brand promise, "Right By You," is a useful case because it was never really about a single advertisement. When the bank refreshed it in 2022 around the purpose of "building the future of ASEAN," it was making a specific, checkable claim that it would connect people and businesses across the region, not just within one country.

 Behind that sits UOB's Foreign Direct Investment Advisory Unit, running since 2011 out of centres across Asia, which has helped thousands of companies from regional F&B chains to Korean manufacturers actually set up and expand across ASEAN markets. The campaign line and the advisory desk are saying the same thing, in two different departments.

 AIA's "Healthier, Longer, Better Lives," launched in 2018, took on an even harder job: an insurer trying to be believed when it talks about wellbeing rather than just payouts. What gives that story some credibility is AIA Vitality, a program that actually tracks and rewards healthier behaviour, and AIA One Billion, a publicly reported commitment to reach a billion people by 2030, measured and disclosed like a business KPI, not just a feel-good campaign line.

 Both organisations are for-profit institutions building profitable products. A bank selling banking, an insurer selling insurance. The difference is simply that the *story they chose to tell* was made operationally true, not just emotionally appealing.  

Across our three-part series the pattern repeats: the brands that earn belief aren't the ones with the most polished story. They're the ones who quietly made the story an operating discipline, not just a campaign.

 We @Intuit Research are curious to hear from the Brand Directors and Marketing leaders here which brand story in your own market has genuinely held up under real customer experience?

 And which one hasn't?

 #BrandStrategy #Banking #Insurance #BrandStorytelling #MarketingLeadership #AsiaPacific #India #Singapore