To shape the strategic direction, we started with a key audience insight grounded in our understanding of New York Times reader behavior and UBS client’s needs. UBS’s audience of high-net-worth individuals, C-suite leaders, and executives consistently engages with New York Times content about heritage, culture, and craftsmanship. But it wasn’t just the subject matter that resonated. It was the personal, intentional, detail-driven approach behind the stories, the sense of care and mastery.

While banking shares many of those same qualities – especially precision, innovation, and dedication – it’s rarely seen in the same light. It’s often perceived as impersonal, functional, and disconnected from the human touch this audience clearly values. That was the tension.

The opportunity was to close this gap by positioning UBS not just as a bank, but as a curator of wealth, offering finely crafted financial solutions that reflect the values of this discerning audience. An institution that approaches financial services with the same care and artistry as a master craftsperson.

This inspired a story-driven campaign that brought the idea of “craft” to life in a fresh, engaging way. Rather than talking about banking in traditional terms, we explored what craft means today, through the lens of makers, artists, and experts across different fields. This approach gave UBS a more relatable way to show their expertise, blending financial acumen with creativity and care.

This positioning helped UBS step into a more emotional, cultural space, something their audience seeks in media but rarely finds in banking related communication, until now. In the end, this strategic approach helped UBS position themselves as a partner that understands the complexities of their clients’ needs and treats wealth management as not just as a service, but a refined craft that reflects the values of a high-net-worth audience.

To demonstrate how UBS offers finely crafted financial solutions that align with its discerning audience’s values, our content solution focused on showing how UBS delivers the same precision, care, and innovation as a master craftsperson. Introducing “Craft Matters,” a 360 content program between UBS and T Brand Studio aimed at challenging the traditional notion of “craft,” specifically exploring why it matters in the world of banking.

The campaign brought the concept of craft to life through storytelling across video and audio – transforming ad space into custom games that reflected the precision and creativity at the heart of UBS’s approach. Our audience of high-net-worth individuals and C-suite executives gravitates toward content that celebrates expertise, excellence, and intention. This campaign met them where they are, with storytelling that reflected their values and interests.

Video: Three short-form films explored craft through the eyes of leaders in publishing, hospitality, and architecture. Penny Martin, editor-in-chief of The Gentlewoman, spoke about precision in storytelling. Fredrik Laseen, general manager of the Royal Scotsman from Belmond, highlighted meticulous guest experience. Melanie Leung of Zaha Hadid Architects discussed innovative design. Each video used personal stories as an entry point to show that precision, care, and innovation—the values behind the world’s top performers – also guide UBS’s approach to financial services.

Audio: A custom 30-second audio spot ran across top NYT podcasts. It explored “the sound of craft,” linking subtle, deliberate actions in physical craftsmanship—like a barista tamping espresso—to UBS’s approach to wealth management. This format deepened emotional resonance with podcast listeners. Three in four Times listeners report a more favorable opinion of companies that advertise on podcasts.

Games: Two custom crossword puzzles, both print and digital, engaged NYT’s puzzle-loving audience of C-suite readers. Themed around problem-solving and the language of craft, the puzzles tapped into this audience’s love of mastery and challenge. Adding NYT Games to a media plan can increase aided brand awareness by up to 32% and action intent by up to 70%. C-suites engage with crosswords 26% more than the average reader.

A dedicated campaign page housed all campaign elements, creating a centralized destination for users to explore every facet of “craft” through UBS’s lens.

“Craft Matters” turned UBS’s brand promise into an immersive, story-driven experience. It reframed wealth management as a thoughtful, modern craft integrated into the New York Times platform – it was emotional, intentional, and deeply relevant to a sophisticated global audience.

Knowing that UBS’s target audience – busy, high-net-worth individuals and C-suite executives and leaders – has limited time and fragmented attention, our amplification strategy focused on meeting them where they already are: immersed in their daily news. Rather than pushing them to another destination to experience the campaign, we pulled them in with a content experience built directly into the ad units themselves. This distributed and seamless approach (a pull-over-push amplification strategy) delivered UBS’s story within the trusted environment of The New York Times, right as readers were consuming the content that matters most to them.

Thanks to The New York Times’ scale, reach, and premium ad formats, we transformed the platform into a stage for UBS’s stories, delivered directly into the reader’s news feeds in a way that felt relevant, native, and non-disruptive.

We used high-impact, custom-built, large-canvas display units to showcase the Crosswords and Videos, with the majority of impressions targeted to high-net-worth C-suites and private investors. This included full-day takeovers of the Tech and Arts homepages and a month-long sponsorship of an ‘Art of Craft’ editorial series.

To ensure deeper engagement and a well rounded understanding of craft, UBS wanted users to see multiple creative formats. We responded with sequential targeting, using bespoke audience pools layered with first-party data and region-specific filters. This allowed us to meet impression goals while maximizing cross-format exposure. In the U.S., we added retargeting that showed users a Crossword if they’d already seen a video, deepening interaction.

Our audio component ran across NYT’s most engaged podcasts, including The Daily, ensuring and using our ability to uniquely audience-target in audio to ensure we reached HNWIs and C-suites.

To expand reach beyond NYTimes.com, we shared video cutdowns on T Magazine’s Instagram and also ran the “Touch Craft” print pages in both U.S. and international editions.

The UBS Craft campaign, driven by an audience-first content strategy, met high-net-worth individuals, C-suite leaders, and executives where they already were – across New York Times video, audio, and games – embedding storytelling seamlessly into the native experience. This innovative approach allowed UBS to tell a wide range of stories and deliver maximum cross-platform exposure through smart targeting and sequencing.

And it worked. This campaign reached the right audience – and it resonated.
UBS reached over 30 million of the most affluent and influential readers globally across digital, audio, and social. Those with over $500k in investable assets were among the most engaged with the campaign across every format, with a click-through rate nearly double the industry benchmark.

And they didn’t just glance at the work, they spent time with it. The campaign generated upward of 4.5 million video views, 244% above benchmark, with social media driving the highest click-through rate of the campaign – more than 3x the industry average.

Perhaps most importantly, it shifted perception. Among affluent audiences, unaided awareness rose by 20 points. In key markets like Singapore, favorability rose 28 points and trust increased 23 points. Intent to recommend UBS rose by 21 points. Among HNWIs, perception of UBS as a brand with the expertise to guide clients through uncertainty jumped 13 points.

Overall the campaign delivered on KPIs, and more importantly, began to redefine how this audience sees UBS. It connected emotionally, performed exceptionally, and made the brand matter more to the people who matter most. Through this storytelling campaign, UBS effectively showed that “Banking is our craft.”

Craft Matters