As our focus shifts towards the new year and people start to think about the future and their financial goals for 2025, UBS revealed the new cinematic component to its international brand campaign ‘Banking Is Our Craft’.
Exploring themes of legacy, succession, innovation, and wealth planning, ‘Crafted for You’ was shot on location in Tokyo and Vancouver by award-winning cinematographer Edu Grau (RadicalMedia). ‘Crafted for You’ follows several key characters as they navigate pivotal moments in their lives with the help of a trusted UBS financial advisor:
- ‘A New Chapter’ follows Frederic, a retiring banker becoming an artist.
- ‘Succession’ follows Alex as she prepares to take over her family business.
- ‘Legacy’ follows Jennifer and Manuel planning for retirement and their family's future.
- ‘Momentum’ follows Rakesh, an entrepreneur scaling his business with UBS's support.
To find out how the campaign came together between the brand, its agency Publicis Groupe and the craftspeople on the filmmaking side, LBB’s Alex Reeves spoke to Dr. Winfried Daun, UBS group head for brand, creative and innovation and the director Edu Grau.
LBB> How does ‘Crafted for You’ build on ‘Banking Is Our Craft’?
Winfried> I would argue it’s the next vital step in establishing our new brand platform. Since its launch a year ago, the core message of our campaign has been that at UBS, we’ve honed our 160 years of experience, our global presence, our exceptional insights and attention to detail to the point that we’ve elevated banking to a true craft. The ‘Crafted for You’ storylines make this idea more tangible; they provide authentic and compelling examples of where and how UBS’s craft truly comes into play.
LBB> What was it about the idea that made it right for a cinematic TVC campaign like this?
Winfried> The challenge for advertising in our category is, of course, how do you visualise the work, how do you portray the results? We’re not designing furniture or fashion. And yet, our advice plays such a vital role in many pivotal moments of our clients’ lives: succession, legacy, business breakthrough – these are important, exciting, daunting, often emotional challenges. And together with our clients, we craft solutions, strategies, answers for these challenges. We felt this idea lent itself to emotional, high-quality storytelling.
LBB> What were the biggest decisions that Publicis made in the scriptwriting process?
Winfried> You would need to ask Publicis! But seriously, a number of decisions have led to where we are. One, our joint belief that our clients and their stories should be the sole focus of the narrative. Two, that each story also shows interaction with a UBS advisor, and that the relationship we portray is characterised by listening, understanding and empathy. Three, that we wouldn’t compromise on quality. If you shoot commercials for a ‘craft’ campaign, then by definition, the bar is set pretty high.
LBB> How did you decide on the four stories to tell in the spots?
Winfried> All of the stories are taken straight out of life. Our advisors from around the globe – no matter whether US, Latin America, Europe, Middle East or Asia – would tell you that succession, legacy, entrepreneurial success and more are the very themes that our clients seek UBS’s advice on.
LBB> Edu, there are four different spots in the campaign and you filmed in Tokyo and Vancouver. How long was the process from agency brief to production and completion of the campaign, and which ads did you film in each city?
Edu> There are four spots and then two global campaigns and basically we shot for four days in Vancouver then two days in Tokyo. The only one that we shot in Tokyo was the Alex story that happens in Asian territories, and from the beginning I think I received a first call from UBS and RadicalMedia in March 2024 and we just finished the commercials ready to be shown in early December, so it's a pretty long spread. It took a bit of time to get approval and we went for production in late September.
LBB> Shooting with Edu Grau gives the films a certain quality. Winfried, what was the filmmaking process like? Are there any details of the four-day shoot that you’ll particularly remember?
Winfried> Throughout the production of our campaign’s flagship assets this year, we’ve had the privilege of working with phenomenally talented people: The Wade Brothers for still photography, Emmy-winning cinematographer Nathalie Kingston for short live-action clips and now, Edu Grau for our 2025 push into TV and TV-like formats. Edu is an exceptional director and human being and the best possible example of a true ‘craftsman’ in his field of work. His attention to detail, his sense of aesthetics and structure, his understanding of human ambition and emotion are nothing short of astonishing. At the same time, he’s very collaborative and open to feedback. The work ethos he demonstrates on and off set is just incredible. I’m not going to call out any particular scene, but I can assure you that there were quite a few moments when, as the camera started rolling, the team behind the screens would let out a collective “oooh”. Edu and his team really know what they are doing.
LBB> What was the script development and casting process like as a director – did you work closely with Publicis and the client to find the right actors to convey each of the narratives in the four spots, and to convey each story?
Edu> Yes we worked very closely on the script and casting with the agency and the client, because in a way we all wanted to convey the same things. And we wanted to go in the same direction so obviously there were talks and conversations, but it felt all very organic and it was very obvious that we wanted the same outcome. So we reached an agreement very easily and very fast in most of these things with the actors on small changes in the script once they were approved.
LBB> How did you as a director visualise the story of the banker turned artist, the inventor of the prosthetics and the young woman who inherits the family cloth business. Was it a fun creative process to visualise these narratives with the client and agency?
Edu> Visualising these stories was actually really far from the treatment and development. You know that you find references, go through storyboards, choose locations and go through all the cinematography techniques that we wanted to use. So I think I would describe the process as fun, as kind of like you're feeding the turkey and you know you cannot make it grow without ideas, as in you keep bringing new ideas to the table until you are ready to shoot. Then when you know you made the right calls and right decisions throughout the process, and then when you are shooting you make them better. So I think it has been a long process but it's been rewarding all along the way.
LBB> How did the global nature of the campaign shape the stories you’d tell?
Winfried> With any type of global effort you’d want to reflect the different regions and cultures that your brand is present in – while keeping the material ‘international’ enough to work across many markets. Assembling a diverse cast only goes so far though; an Asian audience for instance will almost certainly recognise whether a film was shot somewhere in Asia versus the US, UK or South Africa. That’s the reason why our stories were not only set but also shot in North America and Asia, allowing for some of those nuances to come through.
Edu> Yes, one of the big challenges of the story around these commercials is that they are part of an international campaign, so they had to be visual and couldn't have much dialogue. To translate the video into different languages is easy, but through dialogue and so on is a different level, so I think it was important for all of us to make stories that could be told with images, so that you could understand the general idea of the stories with images. That's the whole purpose of creating sometimes you know, so we worked very hard on making the actions as visual and the characters as relatable and likeable as possible. That was very important for us throughout because, as you say, it's a global campaign that needs to speak to different audiences across the globe.
LBB> Are there any interesting technical aspects to the shoot that you would like to talk about?
Edu> A technique that we used in a lot of Frederic's story involved shooting at six frames and then printing it in a way that the speed of the frames is normal, and the way you interlace their frames creates this aura around the things that move that is very poetic. It has a strange impressionistic effect that we like. We used that technique a lot on Frederic, but also on the other stories we always shot a little bit of it. When we focused on the UBS advisor’s details we used that technique to tell the story, so it's a kind of not very often used technique but it's very beautiful to look at. I'm very happy with the result because this technique helped elevate the UBS commercial into something special. We were always looking for that kind of outcome. We were very pleased with the result using that technique.
LBB> The films are exceptionally well crafted. As a Venice Biennale Golden Lion winner, what aspects of craft do you feel are most important when shooting a campaign, and do you apply the same kind of technical discipline and techniques when filming a feature as you do when filming commercials?
Edu> Yes, shooting a commercial is a process that is very close to shooting a movie. Basically the length is completely different but you take it as seriously as when you shoot a movie. Every little detail is important and every little decision on the craft makes an impact on the final result. So for me shooting is always shooting, and I love combining commercials with features because I learn from both. I think they are different things and different parts of the filmmaking industry, but they're also closely related, and at the end of the day what we all want is to tell good stories with good characters that move people. That can be either feature length or it could be a music video. It could be a commercial or it could be a short film. So I love shooting, and I love when things come together in a nice way, and the result moves people. So for us it was an exceptional experience throughout, and to be able to craft those stories with UBS and Publicis meant a lot.
LBB> Finally, are there any moments or specific parts of the films that you think turned out particularly beautifully?
Winfried> It’s hard to pick any favourite moments because I really think that each film has come out so well. That said, I’m a very big fan of scenes that are self-explanatory and don’t need a lot of voiceover or context. For instance, there is a moment in our ‘Succession’ spot when Alex, the young woman, enters her family’s company building together with her father. As they walk through the hall, we see a large portrait of her being hung on the wall right next to her father’s. Or take Frederic, the executive who’s planned his finances so that one day he could just follow his passion of being a painter. The final scene of that spot lingers on Fred, at his first gallery show, exchanging a grateful glance with his advisor. That could be such a cheesy scene, but Edu has turned it into a unique moment of human chemistry and friendship.