Marketing at Wise – a bit of Brand & Creative magic
Ciao 👋 I’m Bea, and I’m part of the Brand and Creative team at Wise, which I joined in January 2021.
I did it with the enthusiasm of a happy customer: when I first came to know Wise, I was a student travelling on a budget. Then when I relocated from Italy to the UK and started moving my savings, I really began to appreciate its value!
So, let’s jump together into some Brand and Creative special effects✨
About us
You might say creativity and finance sound like an odd couple — but have you ever tried parmesan on ice cream?
Truth is, being a creative team in a fintech means embracing a functional, customer-centric approach where every piece of work takes on a meaning that is well connected to the bigger picture. What we ultimately do is help people to notice, understand and love Wise, by delivering campaigns and projects which leverage a unified brand system that gives them consistency and recognition.
The Brand and Creative team is a complex but powerful machine that works through several gears. It comprises people with different expertise and job titles:
🖊Copywriters: When Wise needs to tell the world about something — whether it’s our debit card launching in a new place, or a petition to ban hidden fees — the copy team finds the words, and brings them to life in the form of ads, social media campaigns, landing pages…
💡 Creatives: We’re the ones coming up with the ideas leading to the creatives we produce; more in general, we offer creative support across multiple teams and channels, ensuring that the content looks, feels and sounds unmistakably Wise.
🪄 Creative Operations Managers: They take care of the creative workflow at Wise, from brief to delivery and all the project management in between — making sure that nobody gets a headache when working on large cross-team projects.
🎞 Creative Producers: They’re responsible for setting up, coordinating, and managing video and photo projects. The team collaborates closely with our videographers and creative operations managers.
🎨Designers: The guardians of the visual identity of Wise; they work across multiple teams to provide design direction and deliver business focused, creative led experiences to our customers.
🎬Videographers: Give them a camera and they’ll film (and postproduce) the world for you! Their mission is to deliver memorable, understandable creatives that tell stories of Wise, Wisers and our customers, and help us grow.
The backstory
It all began with a real splash. At the beginning of (Transfer)Wise, creativity was a means of bringing to life the feeling of rebellion against the banking industry that people were expressing in the wake of the financial crash. Protest stunts, physical campaigns for transparency, and provocative messages were the signature of Wise’s first years.
As Wise has been growing over the years, our creative vision has evolved accordingly, with the purpose of building bridges between our brand position and users’ expectations.
The ways we spread our message have changed and diversified, and so have the platforms we use — from the massive stunts in the beginning, to a new brand-oriented, fully accessible, and community-centric approach, which lives on different channels such as social media, print, out of home media and so on…
A team effort
Like all things at Wise, every creative project starts with our customers. It’s our responsibility to translate their feedback and insights into creative opportunities. It’s a highly collaborative process, that involves many other teams.
Every creative project moves from an accurate assessment of the opportunity that it’s based on; throughout this initial stage, we gather feedback from customers as well as input from internal teams. We then designate stakeholders, project managers and arrange a kick-off meeting with the all teams involved in production — copywriters, creatives, designers and producers.
Regular group check-ins ensure that feedback is received in a timely and efficient way — and this makes a big difference in the process.
The mission
Valuing creativity at Wise comes along with valuing customer needs and opportunities. Therefore, a large part of our work consists of researching more relevant ways to make the Wise brand noticed and loved, and understanding how we can differentiate ourselves from what is already on the market.
We align our creative vision strongly with the company’s overarching purpose and business objectives; our ultimate goal is to represent (and contribute to growing!) money without borders, for people without borders.
Next chapters
As a global company, Wise has customers from all corners of the world. This means balancing a broad-spectrum creative view with local relevance is always one of our main challenges.
OK, but what does that mean?
When Wise first started, campaigns used to be focused on specific markets or segments — so content was destined for local audiences. As the company has grown and our product has launched all over the world, this has become more complex to pursue, due to the team’s capacity and time. That’s why for the past couple of years, we’ve primarily crafted a global approach, meant to produce enough content to drive consistent growth across a wide range of audiences, without sacrificing universal comprehension.
One of our main goals in the next quarters is to regain a focus on culturally relevant creatives, suitable for specific markets by delivering regional campaigns and projects.
Behind the scenes
The Brand and Creative team is a well-assorted group of professionals, but also a great bunch to have a pint (or a Mario Kart game) with: the team counts 20 people from different countries. Being exposed to such a varied, strong community is unique: we have regular team rituals where we share inspiration, bond, and have fun together.
Our team’s superpowers
Curiosity 🔎 Wise is a good space where to learn, share knowledge, and inspire each other. If you keep an ear to the ground, you will always bump into interesting conversations.
A (mental) map 🗺 The company is wide and the projects are many and exciting. Holding a mental order helps in keeping a focus on where you are and where you want to go!
Quick reflexes 🏃🏽♀️ In such a fast-paced environment, things can change rapidly; and no day is quite like the other. This is fun – means a lot of surprises! – but it also requires the right attitude.
Your personality 🦹🏻♂️ Everybody is welcome in Wise, and being individuals with different views and passions is what makes the team special.
Do these feel like superpowers you possess as well? Come join us
