Tony Joyce, head of marketing and communications, outlines HSBC Private Bank’s latest moves in event sponsorship and explains how the bank approaches this high impact marketing method.

It’s hardly surprising that HSBC Private Bank, with its global reach and omnipresent branding, takes event sponsorship very seriously and has recently sponsored Design Miami Basel, the largest event in the collectible design field.

According to Tony Joyce, the head of marketing and communications at HSBC Private Bank, it’s all about focus and differentiation – “the trap is to do what everyone else is doing – you need to stand apart from the crowd,” he told WealthBriefing.

The rationale for sponsoring an event in the collectible design field is that the area is exclusive yet modern and growing.  Mr Joyce says that HSBC Private Bank has similar aspirations and its sponsorship of Design Miami Basel shows that it is ahead of the curve in this respect.

As the private bank is part of a larger group there are also internal sponsorship opportunities at the group level, for instance golf in Shanghai and Singapore, and also some niche examples including a pro-am tournament on the eve of major events. Here it’s all about leveraging the main brand and this can sometimes take the form of one evening for a limited number of clients and a behind-the-scenes look at a major event that the bank itself is sponsoring.

Mr Joyce told WealthBriefing that HSBC Private Bank does quite a lot of research around its sponsorship programmes – for instance, are clients actually going along to the events? It also conducts internal research to determine if relationship managers understand and buy into the bank’s sponsorship efforts. The marketing team will talk to both those who didn’t and those who do buy into the project, and also prospects who could have come but didn’t.

The HSBC Group as a whole takes marketing very seriously, says Mr Joyce – it has made a point of spending through the downturn as well as in the good times – and not only because large organisations can get better value when other banks are not spending.  He says that private banking is now taking marketing more seriously and that greater competition is forcing wealth managers to “think properly” about the discipline.

“With sponsorship you need to spend consistently year on year and provide a continuing partnership. You also need to be a large player as at least as much again is spent on internal marketing,” he said.