UOB announced its brand refresh in line with its Purpose – Building the future of ASEAN: For the people and businesses within, and connecting with, ASEAN – a clear and bold statement reflecting the Bank’s long-term strategy and commitment to the region. As part of the brand revitalisation, UOB also unveiled its refreshed logo and seal mark, new apparel and an integrated regional brand campaign ‘Doing Right By You’ to showcase the Bank’s transformation to be future ready for its customers and its people in the new banking era.
The brand refresh is not just a re-branding exercise or a marketing campaign. It signals UOB’s strategic intent to intensify its focus and investment in the region to develop and help realise the potential of the people in ASEAN. It also reinforces UOB’s commitment to facilitate economic flows within and with ASEAN to support businesses across generations.
Mr Wee Ee Cheong, Deputy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of UOB, said, “We have always believed in the potential of ASEAN, with its favourable demographics and resilient fundamentals. As ASEAN re-starts its engine of growth post-pandemic, it is timely for us to unveil our sharpened Purpose and brand refresh.”
“Today, we have the most extensive ASEAN footprint among the Singapore banks. By the time we celebrate our 100th year in 2035, we want to be the most preferred bank for both consumers and businesses across our key markets. A truly regional bank that helps our customers achieve their aspirations.”
Building the future of ASEAN
As a key component of the brand refresh, the Purpose statement underscores UOB’s promise to do right by its stakeholders, including customers, colleagues and the community. To deliver on its Purpose, the Bank will double down on three strategic areas – Connectivity, Personalisation and Sustainability.
Connectivity calls out the core strengths of UOB – its unparalleled regional footprint and one-bank approach that help businesses to connect with and within ASEAN, opening doors to new opportunities of growth across ASEAN.
Personalisation captures the Bank’s focus on customer-centricity and commitment to understand the unique needs of each individual customer, achieved through a combination of data and relationship-led insights. This enables the Bank to create solutions that are closely aligned to customer needs, in a manner that engages them and better anticipates their life goals.
Sustainability reflects the Bank’s long-term approach to the future, specifically the importance of impactful and sustainable development across the region. It captures the Bank’s commitment to help businesses to advance responsibly and to positively impact the environment and foster social inclusiveness alongside economic progress.
UOB will also be rolling out an integrated regional brand campaign through a series of brand films and advertisements on TV, print, digital and out-of-home channels that include airports. The two key messages in the campaign – ‘You Are Unique’ and ‘One Bank for ASEAN’, articulate how we deliver on personalisation and connectivity respectively, to demonstrate our promise of doing “Right by You”. The regional brand campaign will begin from 15 September 2022 across seven markets namely Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Mainland China Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. (See Appendix A and B for more details and visuals of the regional brand campaign)
Launching the refreshed brand
To mark this historic milestone, UOB held a launch event at its new UOB Privilege Banking Centre at 270 Orchard Road.
At the event, the regional brand campaign kicked-off with the ‘You Are Unique’ film series, anchored upon the Bank’s customer-centricity. The film series illustrates how each customer has their unique needs, preferences and goals, which drives the Bank to create progressive solutions and services that are catered to serve them in a way that suits them. The Bank’s unique omni-channel approach, augmented by its award-winning all-in-one UOB TMRW app, seeks to deliver customised engagement with each customer, satisfying their needs with solutions tailored to them, rewards which interest them, and recommends actions to enable them to maximise their outcomes for their future.
Ms Jacquelyn Tan, Head of Group Personal Financial Services at UOB, said, “We are all unique, from our preferences and needs, right down to our financial goals. Therefore, understanding our customers through a combination of data and relationship-led insights is the foundation for us to deliver our promise to do right by our customers. We believe that because every customer is unique, they should have a personalised experience with UOB, whether it is engaging with us digitally, through our relationship managers or physically at our branches. This is what drives us to consistently sharpen our approach to develop new solutions and services that are relevant to our customers and their ever-changing lifestyle and life stage needs.”
Echoing the Bank’s ongoing transformation of its physical network, the new UOB Privilege Banking Centre at Orchard was also designed to offer a holistic experience to customers, with well-thought through spaces to facilitate deeper conversations and interactive engagements around wealth and wellness solutions. (See Appendix D for details and photos of the 270 Orchard Road Privilege Banking Centre)
Ms Janet Young, Head of Group Channels and Digitalisation and Group Strategic Communications and Brand, UOB, said, “To cater to the changing and unique needs of our customers and as part of the Bank’s ongoing transformation, we’ve progressively made changes to our UOB branches and wealth management centres, redesigning them for customer engagement and advisory, such that deeper conversations around customers’ needs, beyond banking, can take place. The changes to our branches are in tandem with our people transformation where we have consistently invested in programmes and training, and have already upskilled more than 90 per cent of our branch ambassadors in Singapore and across the region. This has enabled our people to deliver a personalised and enhanced customer experience to our customers – both individuals and businesses.”
Contemporary apparel for branch ambassadors
UOB acknowledges and respects individuality, not only for customers, but its people as well. To reflect the transformation of the roles of UOB’s branch ambassadors and the empowerment of its people to be more agile and innovative, the Bank introduced an extensive new range of UOB apparel to coincide with the brand refresh. The new apparel is an ingenious collection of mix-and-match outfits, to reflect the new multi-skilled roles of its people at the branches. Designed by Odile Benjamin, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Estair Private Ltd, the new apparel incorporates inclusivity and diversity, offering branch ambassadors the versatility and flexibility to dress according to their role and preference. Starting 15 September 2022, all UOB branch ambassadors in Singapore will be wearing their new apparel chosen by them. (See Appendix E for more information and photos of the new UOB Apparel Design Collection)
