CHALLENGE

Azimo are a digital global money transfer business. They challenge established players like the banks and Western Union. And they're ambitious. Their brief: treble their revenue by 2022. In a category where product and price advantage don’t last long, they needed more to inspire customers, staff and investors. They needed a stand out brand.

CHANGING THE FUTURE FAST WITH CREATIVE ENERGY.

Think Long.

Azimo had to 'cross the chasm', to reach out beyond early adopters to convince the mainstream who preferred the safe option of the market leader. We focused on key customer segments to create a 'market leader' experience to win them over. That meant providing a great offer and delivering it through a brand with leadership stature and a trusted presence in their life.

Active brand idea

Conventional wisdom is that you send money home because you love your family. The competitors show smiling mums, kids, brothers and sisters. They celebrate recipients. 

We came to this fresh, so asked the question you only ask before you get educated, “What about the people breaking their backs to send the money?” Our customers - migrant workers - were invisible.

In research the category convention reflected an unfortunate truth, migrant workers all too often feel their efforts are taken for granted back home. What’s more, this lack of appreciation is echoed by mainstream society as well. 

Azimo is different. They were co-founded by migrants for migrants. Turning this into an active brand idea - they support migrant workers and recognise all the hard work. Their ‘hard work deserves more.’

Reimagine it.

We reimagined the category to create an empowering brand world that revered workers and their effort. A world that recognised the journey of migrant workers. A world they could feel proud of. One in which they were portrayed as heroes.

The global brand film heroes a migrant’s story and conveys it with the cinematic production values the story deserves. The powerful voice of actor Nonso Anonzie narrates as we follow a man driving around a city reflecting on the challenges he faced on his journey – hostility, the struggle to belong and the need to learn. As he drives, he notices other migrants working hard; taxi drivers, doctors, students and delivery men are putting in the essential work for their communities.

European voice overs were carefully written for comprehension as for many this wasn’t their first language. The story culminates by revealing that through willpower he’s established himself as a paramedic - settled in his new home and adding value to society. He rushes a patient into a hospital - echoing the COVID-19 crisis. The film is personal yet taps a universal migrant experience to make the compelling point that migrants’ hard work deserves more.

 Alongside this we designed a distinctive new brand identity to flex across all Azimo touchpoints including web, app, digital display and social media. At the heart of the solution were distinctive illustrations - the Azimo workers. These illustrations were designed so that the in-house teams could easily adapt them for ongoing tactical and performance comms.

Pysch for change.

Through a series of interviews with the exec board we built consensus for the new brand direction.

We prepared Azimo stakeholders, partner agencies and internal creative teams with the organisational mindset for crossing the chasm.

We hand-picked and led the agency consortium with the energy required to launch the campaign in 10 weeks. A mix of digital, ATL and agile production skills were assembled. The consortium delivered 400 advertising executions: social animation, performance display banners, radio, CTV and online videos, across Europe: Italy, Spain, UK, Germany and France. And now the campaign is rolling out across Canada, Australia and Hong Kong.  We also set up brand tracking.

After launch we ran workshops to coach Azimo’s internal team on how to execute the new brand world ongoing. They were equipped to consistently execute across the web platform, mobile app, online banners, social posts and social video animations.

RESULTS

 The campaign launched in 2020 and results are from that year.

Brand Cut Through​

Investor Confidence​

Staff Pride​

·      Worked with UN to create International Day of Family Remittance.

·      In-house team brought brand to life Web, App and CRM and Digital.