CASE STUDY
UBS
Repositioning the brand and engaging 60k employees
Challenge
Bigger and broader than previous brand campaigns, the one UBS launched was designed to communicate the company’s transformation under CEO Sergio Ermotti. In the several years since he’d assumed the role, Ermotti led UBS through brand repositioning and aligned all business divisions around a single strategy. UBS was finally ready to share its transformation with the outside world and use the brand relaunch to drive further change.
Before launching a more modern, human and unique brand and ad campaign, UBS had to first win over and prepare its most important advocates – the more than 60,000 employees who live and breathe the brand. UBS looked to Prophet for help developing and implementing an employee engagement campaign that informed, inspired and engaged employees.
Solutions
To engage employees, Prophet created a microsite on UBS’s employee intranet and regularly published relevant content. The topics and formats of posts varied, including quirky educational videos on tone of voice, a brand guidelines game and a series of intimate video portraits of UBS leaders and clients discussing the new positioning and direction. Additionally, we struck a partnership with a young, up-and-coming graffiti artist to immerse employees in the brand’s ethos through four large-scale artworks.
Using rigor and strategically-inspired creative thinking, we applied the same best practices of external marketing to deliver effective internal employee communications:
- Equal effort applied to creating and promoting the site
- All content must be easy and fun to assimilate
- Select a few simple messages to communicate and repeat them
Results
The employee engagement campaign has been and continues to be a resounding success, with UBS continuing to win preferred employer awards every year. We initially defined success as having 30,000 employees visit and engage with the microsite, but have far exceeded that expectation as the microsite has now reached more than 62,000 employees. Both employees and top management have expressed how impressed they’ve been with the employee engagement program.
When asked about the brand relaunch, Hubertus Kuelps (group head of communications and branding) told Forbes, “This particular campaign has definitely energized the employee base. It has brought them to a level of pride…I haven’t seen in my communications career.”
Download UBS’ brand relaunch employee engagement content timeline.
“This particular campaign has definitely energized the employee base. It has brought them to a level of pride…I haven’t seen in my communications career.”
Hubertus Kuelps
Group Head of Communications at UBS