In 2016, Lombard Odier’s ‘rethink everything®’ branding was launched, articulating our longstanding philosophy of rethinking the world around us to provide fresh investment perspectives in a rapidly evolving economic & geopolitical landscape. Since then, we have run visually arresting, thought-provoking advertising campaigns that have encouraged our audience to look differently at the big issues of the day, with a key focus on all aspects of the transition to a sustainable economy.

In 2024, in the context of an investment environment beset by uncertainty on many fronts – from domestic to international politics, & from the continued explosive rise of AI to the on-the-ground impacts of climate change – we launched a campaign entitled, ‘rethinking through the noise’.

Our objective – position ourselves as challengers of conventional wisdom, offering a fresh investment approach. Highlighting our growth and stability across 228 years, we showed that instead of merely providing an alternative view on current topics, we help investors step back from the noise. We demonstrated our belief that staying ahead of the curve comes not from trying to outrun today’s accelerating changes, but from gaining a deep understanding of the systems changes that are underpinning an evolving new economic model – the tectonic plates shifting. And then we adapt our investment decisions accordingly.

We did this by focussing on the rise of a new global economic order, including a growing China-US rivalry over semi-conductor computer chips & the possibility of seismic tariffs in the event of a second Trump presidency; the potential political threat to the Sustainability Revolution; & AI’s ability to transform healthcare & upend the conventional wisdom that ageing societies drain economies.

Asking viewers to pause & rethink these vital investment topics, we showed that by adopting the long-term view, & gaining deep systems understanding, what may initially appear to be short-term risks can instead be seen as long-term opportunities.

To address our challenge of encouraging investors to filter out the noise of today’s fast-changing investment landscape – whilst cutting through the noise ourselves – we created a manifesto video highlighting the build-up of conflicting analysis and opinions that faces today’s investors.

Careful sound design created layers of ‘noise’, with ‘breaking news’ excerpts growing to become a discordant clamour. At the same time, visuals of news reports built an overlapping montage that soon became impossible to follow. The video climaxed with the visuals and audio falling away, replaced by a simple image of Earth seen from space. Highlighting our more than two centuries of experience, we showcased Lombard Odier as being able to step back from the noise to offer investors a view of the bigger picture.

Accompanying our manifesto, we created visual ads for print and online media. In line with our ‘rethink everything®’ branding, our campaign combined attention-grabbing imagery with surprising, thought-provoking text. We focussed on high-quality, creative and appealing visuals that offer a fresh and unexpected perspective on essential investment themes.

With geopolitics a key concern for many investors, we created two ads on this theme. The first showed an image of a Rubik’s cube bearing a world atlas, but as the cube had become jumbled, the nations of the world had become misaligned. This was overlaid with the words ‘new order’, highlighting how what may at first look like disorder, should instead be considered simply a new order, with fresh investment opportunities. The second ad featured a close-up image of the structure of a computer chip overlaid with the word ‘battleground’, highlighting how seemingly tiny things can become focal points for epoch-defining rivalries.

Our third ad featured a series of close-up images, all of faces of elderly people. These were overlaid with the words ‘future proof’, highlighting the crucial economic role that older people will make as AI advances create longer “healthspans”.

Our final ad featured an image of a fiery sun overlaid with the word ‘unstoppable’, asking viewers to reconsider recent warnings that short-term political trends may delay or even halt the Sustainability Revolution.

Accompanying each ad, concise text outlined our ‘rethink’ conviction, noting the long-term investment opportunities being created as today’s economic, social and physical systems evolve. Related content on our website and digital channels appealed to a lay audience, with the inclusion of in-depth analysis and longer-form commentary from geopolitical, sustainability, and demographics experts.

The media solution focussed on collaborating with renowned financial and lifestyle media partners who offer top quality positioning in a contextual environment throughout the UK, Switzerland, France, Italy, UAE and Singapore. Our media approach has always been – fewer, bigger and better positions. Our mission was to stand out as an authentic high-end brand with rich and powerful visuals that point to an intriguing editorial story.

Our campaign launched just one month before the US Presidential election, an election that had been rocked by the replacement of then-President Joe Biden with his Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. All attention was on the growing possibility that former President Donald Trump might win a second term. This was a key moment that presented the perfect timing to get our message across to our target audiences, as the election was likely to have a significant impact on every one of the topics addressed by our campaign, and was uppermost in the minds of many investors.

We invested in placements such full and double-page print ads (which have been our exclusive standard since the 2016 launch of our ‘rethink everything®’ branding) and high impact digital formats to deliver impactful brand value with our audience.

Furthermore, we pursued a unique long-term opportunity in OOH, focussing on Geneva airport where our bank is headquartered, and where we knew we could reach a captive HNW audience.

Finally, social media (organic and sponsored) complemented our strategy, creating immense visibility and dynamic conversations amongst our online communities for both our Group (followers: LinkedIn 228K, X 63K, Instagram 28K) and Asset Management businesses (followers: LinkedIn 81K, X 4K). YouTube represented the perfect environment to serve our manifesto and four vertical videos, helping us reach an outstanding number of views (see below in results section).

Our final plans to build the brand came together as:

• Premium financial print and digital: conversation ownership, land the sustainability, geopolitical and AI messages where influence is created
• Wraps and takeovers: communicate scale and stature to stand out
• OOH: be bold and show that Lombard Odier can and should be noticed
• PR activation
• Social media: sustain an interactive conversation with our online communities and attract new followers

This campaign was hugely successful, bringing increased levels of traffic and engagement on our digital channels, and visibility in the world’s major financial and lifestyle publications.

Between 30 September and 8 December 2024, we registered 67.3mn digital ad impressions, and our print ad circulation reached 7.7mn people. Our manifesto video was viewed over 38.5mn times. Visits to our website continued to rise with a strong average time of 2.29 minutes spent on our campaign pages, as did qualified leads which soared up 22% over the campaign period.

On social media, our LinkedIn posts registered 14.8mn impressions, those on X 26mn, and those on Instagram 4.8mn.

Top performing display formats included digital ads in Il Sole 24 Ore, Khaleej Times, Finanzen, Le Temps and Le Point.

The impact of this campaign on brand perception was positive. Our 2024 Brand Study conducted with the Financial Times shows that consideration to use Lombard Odier has grown continuously since 2020 (67% uplift) and has grown by 2% in 2024.

New order: investing in resilience as geopolitical map is remade