– Mike Smith, CEO ANZ Bank
Project Accord was one of Australia’s most ambitious large-scale corporate rebrands in recent history. Besides 4,000+ bank branches and ATMs in 32 countries, the rebrand included acquisitions and joint ventures with foreign banks throughout Asia and the Pacific, which added challenges around unknown assets.
This rebrand underpinned the Asian-focus of its strategy lead by the bank’s newly appointed CEO, Mike Smith. The business strategy was around differentiating from the Australian “big four” banks to become a super-regional bank.
Over 18 months, we collaborated with the bank to support this direction across its three key geographies: Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific.
We needed to clearly communicate the bank’s new brand promise to its 5.7 million customers from Sydney to Singapore and Noumea to New York.
ANZ global rebrand | 1,200 branches |
Diadem was brought into the project early while the branding agency M&C Saatchi was developing the bank’s new identity so that we could consider implications within the built environment. Diadem’s advice influenced ANZ’s decisions, including the use of colour and logo arrangement to have the most substantial impact in the built environment – from corporate offices and bank branches to point-of-sale and vehicle livery as well as thousands of stand-alone ATMs.
Diadem was appointed to join the steering committee to support decision making by advising on program matters, tendering contracts in each country, and feasibility of launch activities across the region. These meetings were based at ANZ’s Melbourne headquarters and Asian headquarters in Singapore. Attendance at project meetings in Indonesia, Hong Kong pre-launch was also part of our responsibility. Once a program was established for New Zealand, Diadem’s Auckland team mirrored its advisory role in Wellington in preparation for its national rollout.
While global procurement was desirable, this was not feasible due to the rollout scale and the widespread logistics to reach each country on time. Instead, Diadem sourced and engaged pre-qualified contractors to manufacture and install locally. To ensure brand consistency, Diadem oversaw the sourcing of materials and the provision of control samples, concise products and meticulous site documentation.
