As I said when I started this blog, the campaign and videos I will discuss will just be picked at random from what I see in my daily life and we shall be going overseas with this one. Just less than a week ago I returned from exploring a small area , Hoi An, of the beautiful Vietnam. Now I could go on and on telling you how mesmerising the place is and how I fell in love with all the lanterns, I may have come back with a fair few, but that’s not what this blog is about.
Getting to Vietnam meant a long haul flight for me, which I prefer as I get to catch up on all the films I meant to see but never did during the year. Before each film though they have adverts which is where I was introduced to the Timeless Values campaign by UOB Private Bank. The first video in this campaign I watched was Newspaper Boy, I’ll let you watch this one before I carry on nattering too much.
As the campaign clearly tells us, it is all about Timeless Values; this particular video promotes the importance of trusted relationships through a caring young paper boy and an elderly woman. We are introduced to their relationship though a quick series of scenes showing the young boy taking some time out of his paper round to spend with this elderly lady. The weather has really been made use of here as when we are introduced to the rain we are also introduced to the first day the elderly lady isn’t sat out on her porch to welcome the young boy. The rain here forces us to feel sad that their daily interaction is missing from this particular day. The next day the rain clears but the elderly lady doesn’t return to her porch to greet the young boy and well you know the rest. This is where the advert really introduces us to the values of trust and loyalty with the overarching message of being there for people all the time, especially in a time of need.
Even though this video is in English with English subtitles the video is international, not only with its values but through its actions. If you were to strip away the dialogue you could still understand the overall story of this video, granted not as easily but the message would still be understood, allowing UOB Private Bank to reach a wider audience.
UOB has focused on intergenerational relationships with the teaching of good values, as well as the understanding and respect of them.
This next video featured in the campaign, The Book, is centred around a young girl and showcases values of integrity and honesty.
Through this video we are taught two things. Firstly, through the young girl as she learns the importance of integrity. When they realise the book is valued at a lot higher than the customer donating it originally thought it was worth, especially after he didn’t return to retrieve that particular book, we see part of the young girl wants to keep it. With the nudge of the older man, she realises what she should do, what we can already see she knows if the temptation of the money is ignored…it’s almost as if she has a cheeky devil and angel on each shoulder!
The second thing we are taught through the young man that donated the books is how some things are more valuable than money. Upon his return he doesn’t try to retrieve the book valued the most in terms of money, instead he retrieves the book that is most valuable to him in terms of sentimentality.
The last video featured in this campaign that I will discuss explores trust and shows that, just because we are older than the children in the first two videos doesn’t mean we are necessarily wiser.
Watching this video we also learn the values of trust through the young man, I know I did. Like the young man, we initially think that the shopkeeper is being taken advantage of as we see him losing money and profit when the customer leaves with extra after already paying. When the young man later witnesses the same customer returning to pay for products that she recently took but didn’t pay for her trustworthiness becomes apparent to us as an audience, especially with the wise words the father says to his son. This intergenerational relationship shows how we shouldn’t always rush people into updating the way they do things before first understanding their way of working.
I also love this video for the lightheartedness and cheekiness of the shopkeeper using the till his son got him as a sweet dispenser.
Like a lot of these sort of campaigns it’s not always made apparent what brand or product is being promoted. I find it funny how this campaign is for a bank when the featured videos have the message that certain values are more important than money. I suppose this is what they are showing all along – how they’re not just some corporate bank after money but behind the bank there are people that believe and follow these values over money and they support their customers following the same values.
I hope you have enjoyed my exploration into the UOB Private Bank’s Timeless Values campaign. I would love to see your comments below and I’m always up for a discussion on any of my blog topics if you want to drop me a message via LinkedIn or Instagram.
Featured image courtesy of YouTube/United Overseas Bank.
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