Every September, tens of thousands of students take their first steps towards independence. It’s also the moment banks compete fiercely to secure their accounts. At this stage of life, when habits are still being formed, decisions can lock in loyalty for years to come. For NatWest, this was a critical chance to connect with Gen Z at the very start of their financial journey.
Building on the 2022 “Tomorrow Begins Today” brand platform, the campaign needed to connect with the larger brand film — even though it was still in production. Our ambition was to create a student campaign that felt bold, culturally relevant, and distinct from the sea of sameness in financial services marketing. At the same time, it had to deliver enough assets to test different messages across a broad student audience.
The student banking market is crowded and commoditised. Competitors all dangled similar incentives — cash, Tastecards, and Railcards — but packaged them with predictable tactics: stock imagery, tired tropes, and transactional copy.
We needed to design a hero 30-second film as the anchor for the campaign. This master asset would then cascade into shorter social edits, object-led ads, and static formats in-branch — enabling NatWest to target the right people with the right message at the right time.
We anchored the campaign around the rallying cry “Bring. It. On.” — a line that captured both NatWest’s brand promise and the restless energy of new students. The campaign was structured in two phases: Consideration, built around the “Class of 22” hoodie (a device rooted in both the brand film and student culture), and Conversion, where the offer came to life through films, discovery ads, UCAS partnerships, and social media.
To achieve a distinctive look, we combined live-action filming with motion-tracked CGI. Using a robotic camera arm, we precisely mirrored movements in a 3D environment, enabling the entire 30-second sequence to be filmed as one continuous shot.
As Lead Designer, I translated this strategy into a unified design system: a bold purple world, consistent across every touchpoint yet flexible enough to carry different messages. From cinematic motion to hyper-targeted UCAS emails, the work fused cultural relevance with strategic rigour — giving NatWest a confident and ownable presence in a cluttered market.
The campaign saw a 30% uptick in student account openings as a result, resulting in an internal acknowledgment to myself and the team.
