Video podcast: Bank of Ireland’s new ‘Right with you’ brand platform places financial confidence at the centre of the Bank’s customer strategy. Bank of Ireland’s chief marketing officer Laura Lynch and Folk VML managing director Enda Kelly talk about the journey behind the new platform.
As you might have noticed over the past week or so Ireland’s oldest bank, Bank of Ireland, has launched a whole new brand platform centred on the promise to be “Right with you” as the 242-year-old institution seeks to modernise its image and counter growing competition from fintech start-ups and digital-first rivals.
The new brand platform, developed with creative agency Folk VML, represents a strategic shift towards what the bank calls “enabling financial confidence” at key decision-making moments in customers’ lives.
“How people consume banking and think about money day to day and how it flows through their lives is completely changing. The bar has been set, not in banking, but outside of our own industry”
“The timing couldn’t be better for us to refresh our brand and the commitment we’re making to our customers and the communities in which we operate,” said Laura Lynch, Bank of Ireland’s chief marketing officer, in an interview for the ThinkBusiness Podcast.
The new platform reveal coincides with new research conducted by Red C in February among 1,000 Irish adults that showed people across Ireland feel assured in their ability to manage everyday tasks but show far less confidence when thinking about their financial confidence.
The new brand platform aims to demonstrate the Bank’s intention to stand alongside customers as they navigate financial decisions. These decisions can happen at various stages of a customer’s life, whether it is a young couple getting their first mortgage, an entrepreneur embarking on a business expansion or a child opening a Smart Start account.
Breaking conventions
The new brand platform was kickstarted with a “media first” in Ireland where four new TV ads were broadcast simultaneously during the 9 O’Clock News on RTE on Monday night (23rd March). It coincides with the launch of Bank of Ireland’s new three-year strategy, which includes a vision to offer “unrivalled financial choice both now and for generations to come.”
Lynch emphasised that external market forces have accelerated the need for change.
“The market is changing rapidly. We have a very different competitive set. How people consume banking and think about money day to day and how it flows through their lives is completely changing,” she said. “The bar has been set, not in banking, but outside of our own industry.”
This acknowledgment reflects how customer expectations are increasingly shaped by technology giants and digital-native companies rather than traditional financial services providers.
Enda Kelly, managing director at Folk VML, highlighted the creative challenge of standing out in what he described as a notoriously conservative sector. “This category is statistically only second to pharmaceutical and healthcare when it comes to creating dull advertising,” he said.
The agency’s research revealed the scale of the attention challenge facing financial brands: consumers receive up to 10,000 marketing messages daily, yet less than 1% of human attention is spent on advertising, with fewer than half of those advertisements creating any emotional resonance.
“The biggest risk is not taking a risk and being brave with the advertising,” Kelly argued. “If you ask about risk, the biggest risk is not being brave and actually not creating emotionally resonant brand advertising.”
How research drives strategy
The development process involved extensive research across Bank of Ireland’s customer base and employee network. Lynch described it as having “more insight and research throughout the entire thing, from the very start to the very end” than any previous project.
“We did extensive research with colleagues and with customers. And when I say customers, every type of customer – our wealth advisors, our corporate relationship managers, sector specialists, people who work in branches, contact centres, the Fraud team,” she explained.
The research revealed a critical insight: while “Right with you” felt authentic to the Bank of Ireland brand, it also highlighted gaps between customer expectations and current service delivery.
“It’s the right bar for us to set ourselves,” Lynch said.
Balancing heritage with innovation
The challenge for Bank of Ireland mirrors that facing many established financial institutions: maintaining the trust associated with heritage while demonstrating the agility expected in the digital age.
Kelly described the delicate balance that people require: “They want the trust of a 200-plus-year-old bank, pillar institution, but they also want the utility of a tech company and the simplicity of a tech company.”
The Bank has been investing heavily in digital transformation, with Lynch noting that “the pace of innovation over the last five to 10 years has been exponential, particularly in the last five years post-Covid.”
Creative execution
The new brand platform launches with TV ads that take an unconventional approach for the financial services sector.
Rather than the “manifesto style” advertising common in banking, the campaign dramatises specific moments where Bank of Ireland can build customer confidence.
The ads feature various scenarios: intergenerational money management, business succession planning, fraud protection, and everyday banking challenges like bill-splitting.
“We gave ourselves the ambition that we were going to show people what we are. We’re not just going to say it,” Kelly explained. “Let’s bring those to life as proof points of the brand rather than just telling people what we are, who we are, what we will do for them in the future.”
While emphasising the emotional and cultural aspects of new brand platform, Lynch was clear about its commercial purpose.
“Let’s be very clear why you do marketing, and why marketing exists in any organisation – it’s to grow and to deliver your commercial targets,” she said.
Lynch said the “Right with you” brand platform is designed as a long-term commitment rather than a short-term campaign, with plans to extend the “Right with you” promise across all customer touchpoints, from mobile apps to branch interactions.
“Our brand never stops evolving or changing,” Lynch said.
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