HSBC Global Investment Summit 2025: Building a Global Content & Brand Ecosystem Around Global Institutional & Corporate Leaders
Agency: Ride Shotgun
Client: HSBC Corporate & Institutional Banking
Award: Best B2B Content Campaign, 2025: Gold
“A smart campaign that used multiple touchpoints to target and attract their audiences - a masterclass in content marketing for business summits - highly integrated across each channel, demonstrating the efficacy of a smart and carefully considered strategy - both powerful and engaging visual narrative.”
Brief
HSBC’s 2025 brief was to deliver an integrated B2B campaign around its Global Investment Summit (GIS 25), which simultaneously launched its combined Corporate & Institutional Banking (CIB) unit in key priority markets worldwide, including Singapore, Hong Kong, the US, Europe, Mexico, and the MENAT region.
The challenges were:
Capture the Summit Audience: Engage +4,000 finance leaders in Hong Kong, representing ~$58 trillion assets under management with personalised brand experiences whilst reinforcing HSBC’s position as a global financial leader.
Extend Reach to Non-Attendees: Drive visibility and engagement among institutional and corporate decision-makers not present in Hong Kong, many of whom were unaware of GIS24 (inaugural event from last year).
Integrate Brand & Business Contexts: Align GIS 25 with HSBC’s 160-year celebrations and other brand-level activations (e.g., Hong Kong 7s), creating resonance across different audience mindsets.
Operate Within Flat Budgets: Deliver greater scale and effectiveness than 2024 while maintaining YoY investment levels.
The core opportunity was to demonstrate HSBC’s ability to connect institutions, markets, and ideas globally, reinforcing CIB’s value proposition while achieving measurable marketing effectiveness.
Solution
HSBC and OMG executed a multi-layered B2B “bubble” strategy, surrounding institutional leaders across touchpoints:
Audience & Content Mapping: Journey-based mapping sequenced communications across pre-event, during-event, and post-event phases.
Attendees encountered GIS 25 branding en route (airport lounges, HK Airport OOH, hotel keycards, venue panels).
Non-attendees were engaged through hyper-local media (Axios, Gulf News, WeChat) and tier-one global publishers.
Integrated Brand Moments: GIS 25 was amplified via HSBC’s 160-year anniversary and Hong Kong 7ssponsorship, embedding the campaign in cultural and business contexts.
Real-Time Newsroom: A multidisciplinary global team delivered 18 Bloomberg live interviews and rapid HSBC-produced content distributed within hours. Agile workflows allowed adaptation to US trade policy shifts mid-event.
Paid, Owned, Earned Fusion
Paid: Targeted LinkedIn, Bloomberg, CNBC, and Smart banners ensured high-value impressions
Owned: HSBC CIB website hosted live insights and video content, supported by tailored GIS email streams.
Earned: Journalists were hosted on-site, generating global coverage and authority.
Post-Event Amplification: HSBC produced podcasts and thought leadership content that extended engagement over months, cementing GIS 25 as an ongoing dialogue, not a one-off event.
Results
GIS 25 delivered outstanding B2B effectiveness:
Efficiency Gains: CTR rose +771% YoY, while CPC dropped.
Scale: Paid campaign achieved 83.2M reach, with 53.9M engagements.
Engagement Depth: Video completion rates up +40%.
Earned Media: 73% YoY increase in journalists attending, with over 3000 articles in over 10 markets.
Owned Content: Over 100K listens and streams to podcasts captured at the event, delivered for the first time as video podcasts.
Audience Penetration: 14.2% penetration across the institutional target universe, with peaks of 70% in Singaporeand 55% in Mexico.
Business Value: Raised profile of senior HSBC leaders with top institutional clients, embedding HSBC’s authority at a boardroom level.
Why it should win: GIS 25 exemplified B2B integration at a global scale — seamlessly combining OoH, digital, live content, and earned authority. It proved how an institutional bank can deliver measurable business outcomes and brand equity without increasing spend, setting a new benchmark for integrated B2B campaigning.