Absa Group 'Built for Brave Campaign'

Absa Group ‘Built for Brave’

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ABOUT THE WORK

INTRODUCTION
Heading into 2026, Absa was faced with the challenge of growing their SME customer base and strengthening their position as the bank of the entrepreneur in a market where traditional banks increasingly compete with agile, digital-first fintech experiences.

The challenge wasn’t simply to promote another business account. It was to amplify Absa’s relevance as a top-of-mind financial partner to entrepreneurs who are chronically busy, digitally connected, and increasingly accustomed to financial services that feel simple, intuitive, and human.

Built for Brave, a 12-part video storytelling series, spotlighted the real entrepreneurial stories of Absa SMEs, while a parallel R50 Business Evolve campaign translated that emotional relevance into a simple, accessible product proposition. Together, these campaigns moved Absa from traditional “bank advertising” to authentic storytelling and encouraged audiences to open an Absa Evolve account.

Moreover, at its core, the symbiotic effort of these two campaigns brought Absa’s “Your story matters” promise to life by putting the real stories of entrepreneurs front and centre, affirming Absa’s intentionality in always recognising the person and the journey behind entrepreneurial success.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
SMEs represent a notoriously “hard-to-reach” consumer segment in South Africa. They’re building livelihoods, creating jobs, serving communities, and making countless decisions every day. Yet, SME banking communications often default to product features, rates, and polished business imagery.

At the same time, emerging fintechs are changing what entrepreneurs expect from financial services: more simplicity, speed, accessibility, and relevance.

From a brand perceptive, Absa’s disconnect hinged on their need to compete for SME clients’ attention and trust. Despite having the credibility of an established bank, Absa desperately needed to close their relevance gap with SMEs, shifting perceptions from a “traditional financial institution” to a partner that genuinely understands and backs the entrepreneur behind the business.

BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
(1) Strengthen Absa’s positioning as the bank of the entrepreneur.
(2) Bring the Absa Business Banking “We get it” positioning (launched 2025) and the overarching “Your story matters” brand promise (launched 2024) to life relatability.
(3) Elevate Absa from fatigued “traditional” financial services advertising.
(4) Convert awareness and consideration into measurable action through a simple campaign spotlighting the R50 per month account proposition under Absa’s Business Evolve.
(5) Grow the pipeline of prospective SME customers for Absa Business Evolve.

TARGET AUDIENCE
The campaign primarily targeted South African SMEs and entrepreneurs, particularly working-class and emerging middle-market business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.
These are not simply “business decision-makers”. They are often the owners, salesperson, accountant, marketer, customer service team, and operations manager, all at once. The campaign, therefore, needed to respect their reality of busyness and information fatigue rather than talk to them like a corporate audience.

STRATEGY
We built the campaign around a simple behavioural principle: before asking entrepreneurs to choose a bank, give them a reason to believe the bank understands them, the bank that “gets it”.

This informed a two-stage strategy:

1. Build emotional relevance.

The Built for Brave storytelling series celebrates real entrepreneurs and the bravery behind their businesses. Crucially, we didn’t only tell polished success stories. We showed the setbacks, uncertainty, and sacrifice behind them. The entrepreneur was the hero. Absa was strategically positioned as merely the champion in their corner.

2. Turn relevance into action.

The R50 Business Evolve campaign then shifted from emotional storytelling to practical utility. The result was a financial-services campaign that moved from emotion to relevance, redirecting to the Business Evolve solution and inspiring action.

CREATIVE EXECUTION
Built for Brave, a 12-part storytelling series featuring real SME entrepreneurs:

Importantly, the art direction for this campaign was rooted in the details that made each entrepreneur’s story personal. Family photographs, first receipts, records of their first customers, and treasured memorabilia became part of the visual language, turning the set into a collection of personal milestones rather than generic business imagery.

The Daily Sun digital newspaper was brought in as a strategically important partner in taking these stories to market owing to their credibility. Additionally, their audience gave Absa access to working-class and emerging middle-market South Africans in a context that felt culturally and editorially relevant.

The stories were distributed across:

– Daily Sun digital articles (long-form content)
– Homepage takeovers and ROS banners on Daily Sun’s news-sharing platform that promoted click-through to opening an account
– Short-form content on collaborative Daily Sun and Absa social platforms
– Thought-leadership social content led by relationship bankers
– Boosted video cutdowns.

And this is only the beginning. With three stories live and nine more still to come, the campaign continues to grow the conversation around Mzansi’s brave entrepreneurs.

BUSINESS IMPACT
Using Daily Sun’s platform, the launch storytelling article alone delivered 475 000 impressions and 280 clicks into the account-opening journey, demonstrating the turning point of this emotional proposition into a measurable acquisition journey.

23.9 million impressions. 505 800 clicks. 2.3 million people reached. Importantly, the campaign is still rolling out, with nine stories still to come, meaning these results represent performance during an active campaign rather than a finalised campaign period.

MARKET IMPACT
The campaign helped challenge the traditional way financial services communicate with SMEs. Rather than asking entrepreneurs to engage with a bank on the bank’s terms, Absa entered their stories, their social feeds, and their realities. It also demonstrated that a major financial-services brand can combine the credibility of an established bank with the authenticity, speed, and social relevance increasingly associated with challenger brands.

CONCLUSION
“We get it” was more than a tagline. It became a way of changing how Absa showed up for entrepreneurs. We didn’t just tell SMEs that Absa understood them. We built the campaign around understanding them, and the results speak volumes.

CREDITS

Client/Brand: ABSA Group

Agency: Lumico
Executive Producer and Director: Daniel Malherbe
First Art Director: Alwyn Strydom
Creative Director: Liezel Malherbe
Account Management: Ayanda Khumalo
Production Manager: Isabel-Marié Weerheim
Art Director: Jakie Lotz
Prop Master: Carel Combrink
Director of Photography: Armin van Antwerpen
1st AC: Ryan Ferreira
Teleprompter Operator: Mxolisi Mchunu
Photographer: Marcel Gouws
Make-Up Artist: Noma Kumeka
Head Video Editor: Louri Rootman
Video Editor: Thabiso Seanego
Graphic Designer: Maryke Stols
Copywriter: Autumn Neethling
Copywriter: Annerine Strauss