ATB Financial: The Reinvention
Executive Creative Director
Deliverables :
Brand Architecture, Internal Culture, Brand Strategy, Visual Identity, Photography & Film, Integrated Campaigns, Retail & Digital Experience
Results :
Successfully repositioned a government-mandated institution into a modern, consumer-first brand, adopted by 5,000+ internal staff
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The Challenge
ATB was an institutional bank formed during the depression, carrying a legacy perception of being the "Lender of Last Resort." Our mandate was to reinvent them as a nimble, future-forward financial partner. The hurdle? The internal culture was frozen in the past.
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Insight
You can't market "friendly" if your staff feels "institutional." We realized the rebrand had to start internally. We gave the staff permission to be human first, bankers second.
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Strategic Unlock
We launched the "Happiness Campaign"—an internal-first strategy that retrained staff on empathy and consumer connection. This cultural shift became the foundation for a new visual identity, retail design, and digital product suite that modernized the bank from the inside out.
Change starts from the inside out
The rebrand was the public face, but the "Happiness Campaign" was the heartbeat. The real story here is how we retrained an institutional culture to embrace a consumer-first mindset.
