B&TB&TB&T
  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Technology
  • Regulars
    • Agency Scorecards
    • Best of the Best
    • Campaigns of the Month
    • CMO Power List
    • CMOs to Watch
    • Culture Bites
    • Fast 10
    • New Business Winners
    • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • Jobs
  • Awards
    • 30 Under 30
    • B&T Awards
    • Cairns Crocodiles
    • Women In Media
    • Women Leading Tech
Search
Trending topics:
  • Cairns Crocodiles
  • Nine
  • Seven
  • Federal Election
  • Pinterest
  • AFL
  • WPP
  • Anthony Albanese
  • AI
  • NRL
  • Thinkerbell
  • Channel 10
  • EssenceMediaCom
  • State of Origin
  • News Corp
  • Cairns Hatchlings
  • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • TV Ratings
  • Radio Ratings
  • Sports Marketing

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.
Reading: UBank Boss Says No To TVCs For ReBrand
Share
B&TB&T
Subscribe
Search
  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Technology
  • Regulars
    • Agency Scorecards
    • Best of the Best
    • Campaigns of the Month
    • CMO Power List
    • CMOs to Watch
    • Culture Bites
    • Fast 10
    • New Business Winners
    • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • Jobs
  • Awards
    • 30 Under 30
    • B&T Awards
    • Cairns Crocodiles
    • Women In Media
    • Women Leading Tech
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.
B&T > Disruption > UBank Boss Says No To TVCs For ReBrand
DisruptionMarketing

UBank Boss Says No To TVCs For ReBrand

David Hovenden
Published on: 16th June 2016 at 11:58 AM
David Hovenden
Share
5 Min Read
SHARE

The Tinder of Australian banking, UBank eschewed TV advertising in its brand relaunch earlier this year because as a disruptor brand it felt appropriate to try something different its CEO has told B&T.

Lee Hatton is a 15-year veteran of banking having held a range of senior positions within NAB, she took over the reins as CEO at UBank in February 2015, a fully owned but otherwise separate start-up bank. She was among the speakers at the Comms Council’s launch of research conducted by Deloitte that found the advertising contributed $40 billion to Australian GDP.

While she’s worked in banking for ever, the New Zealand born Hatton attributes her fellow Kiwi export Xero accounting software as opening her eyes to the power of cloud-based companies.

“Xero blew my mind in terms of what cloud could do. We get to take all this new technology and work out what consumers want and we know what they want, they want really simple banking,” she said.

She cites Warren Buffet who says he only invests in companies he likes, trusts and admires as being her inspiration when looking to forge partnerships. Creative agency the Monkeys was one such organisation according to Hatton.

Owing to its relatively small size, UBank employs around 200 people, she says you have to be really intimate.

“It was important that they [the Monkeys] were up for being part of this next evolution of UBank and they were willing to try something different.”

Although the Monkeys have been with UBank since its inception in 2008, Hatton said that the past 18 months have been pivotal in the consumer-only bank’s history.

“When we launched UBank we were new, so we were really disruptive so we could be crazy and provocative in a different way. But what had happened was that we had lost our way and we were starting to look a bit eclectic. Customers were starting to say ask us what we actually stood for.”

Hatton said that research was showing that we’d talked for years about disrupting banking, but no-one knew what that actually meant. People knew what UBank wasn’t, but it didn’t know what it was.

A lot of time in focus groups and conducting consumer research, and what UBank came up with was that people wanted to liberate banking. Provide banking that is simpler, better smarter, she says.

Remarkably for a bank, UBank arrived at the conclusion that perhaps what Australians really needed was less.

The All I Need project was born and a documentary was made. The premise for of the programme was that the Australian dream of owning your own home had been hijacked along the way and we found ourselves working the longest hours in the world to buy the biggest houses in the world. The result being Australians now find themselves miserable and stressed.

Central to the All I Need project is a 45-minute documentary hosted by Andrew Dado, which is as much a social experiment as it is a promotion for the bank.

“As a digital bank, the beauty of the documentary is that it gives the bank human faces for people to relate to,” Hatton said.

It also helped galvanize what the brand stood for culturally. “We had our people be part of the documentary. Staff watched it being filmed and made. There was a big viewing night in the office where everyone got to see it.”

The documentary has also been sliced and diced and parts of it are woven into the banks narrative. She said that staff at UBank consider themselves to be part of the brand. The long form content is a big pillar of the bank from every angle.

“It’s not to say we won’t do TV again, it’s just that as a disruptor we wanted to do something different.”

Join more than 30,000 advertising industry experts
Get all the latest advertising and media news direct to your inbox from B&T.

No related posts.

TAGGED: Advertising Standards Bureau, James Northfield, makeup, reno rumble
Share
David Hovenden
By David Hovenden
Follow:
David Hovenden is one of the co-founders of The Misfits Media Company and is B&T's editor-in-chief. He has been writing about advertising, marketing and media for more than 15 years. At the same time, he has also written for B&T's sister publication Travel Weekly on all matters travel related. Through this publication he can claim to have stepped foot on every continent in the world (now claimed to be eight, if you accept NZ is its own continent). He has also covered the business of law when he was editor-in-chief and publisher of Lawyer Weekly. Human Resources when he worked for that eponymously named title and a plethora of business and technology publications including, but not limited to PC Week, Australian Personal Computer, Web Week, Internet World, Factory Equipment News, Architecture Today and Building Product News. In his spare time David enjoys fishing, kayaking, fine dining and spending time with his family.

Latest News

Seven West Media’s Sales Boss Henry Tajer To Step Down
16/06/2025
ID Collective Opens Business With Blunt By Adding The Umbrella Brand To Its Agency Portfolio
16/06/2025
Criteo Reveals ‘For The Love Of Commerce’, “To Shape & Improve The AI-Driven Commerce Experience”
16/06/2025
Inside Selena Gomez’s Purpose-Driven Beauty Empire: Rare Beauty CPO Goes Beyond Gloss At Vogue Codes
16/06/2025
//

B&T is Australia’s leading news publication magazine for the advertising, marketing, media and PR industries.

 

B&T is owned by parent company The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.

About B&T

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise

Top Categories

  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Opinion
  • Technology
  • TV Ratings

Sign Up for Our Newsletter



B&TB&T
Follow US
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Register Lost your password?