HSBC: Meal with a Movie Star

The Challenge

HSBC needed to connect meaningfully with Indian professional expats moving overseas and demonstrate a genuine understanding of their journey, not just their financial needs. The challenge was to create content that would resonate emotionally with this audience while driving real commercial outcomes in the form of new account openings.

The Strategy

The campaign was built around a single, powerful insight: food carries the emotional memory of home. For expats navigating life in a new country, the connection to familiar flavours is deeply personal. Rather than talking about banking features, HSBC chose to show that it truly understood the expat experience by making that emotional connection the heart of the campaign.

The Work

The team created influence-led social content with Priyanka Chopra Jones, surprising three Indian expat families with a personalised meal containing their favourite dishes from home, and one of India's most famous actors. Shot in four hours in a single location, the content was distributed through earned and owned channels, keeping the feel intimate and authentic rather than produced. The simplicity of the execution was central to its power.

Results

The content was seen over 668 million times on Instagram alone, making it one of the most viewed Instagram reels of all time. It led to over 109,000 expats opening a new bank account with HSBC, making it the brand's most successful campaign ever across engagement, conversion, and account openings.

The Judges' Verdict

“Using the significance of food to demonstrate that HSBC genuinely understands the expat journey was described as powerful and culturally sensitive.”