Q&A: How fintech brand Wise built brand awareness with an immersive pop-up

Neobank Wise recently launched an immersive pop-up at London’s Future Stores, supporting its brand position of ‘A Whole World of Different’. In this Q&A, Rowena Rowland, Senior Creative Strategist at Dalziel & Pow, explains how the agency helped the fintech brand bring its brand strategy into a physical space.

FSF: What was the brief from Wise and how does it fit into their strategic positioning?

Rowena Rowland: As a digital-native brand, Wise wanted to build brand awareness by launching its first ever physical presence, getting its products and services into people’s hands and connecting with consumers in real life.

We partnered with Wise to design the pop-up activation, located at the Future Stores flagship on Oxford Street from 30 March to 13 April, which focused on celebrating Wise’s everyday current account services – shifting perceptions of solely being an international transfer service to a more holistic everyday offer, promoting Wise’s vision of a current account that works both at home and abroad.

How did you realise it?

Through stakeholder workshops and collaborative design sessions, we defined an experience design strategy that invited visitors to experience ‘A Whole World of Different’. The Future Stores platform offered the perfect canvas to express this, acting as a beacon for people to discover the brand and its financial services, across an interactive environment where walls and ceiling merge.

Featuring large digital wrap screens that act as huge brand billboard attractors, we designed the space to be visually striking and to showcase Wise’s distinctive market proposition in an immersive and entertaining way.

To complement the immersive digital experience, Wise wanted to bring the human touch. We used honest and raw materials to convey this and placed a concierge at the threshold to enable visitors to personalise their journey around the space, with the help of a knowledgeable Wise brand ambassador.

Digital stations allowed visitors to get hands on with the current account offer, whilst a user control area allowed them to interact with Wise’s playful brand assets.

As a brand in culture, Wise wanted to ensure visitors were rewarded with playful merch via a ‘swag kiosk’, or an international refreshment via the Matcha Bar. Wise partnered with JENKI Matcha, a Wise Business customer, where free matcha drinks were offered at the Bar for all new customer sign-ups. JENKI’s Matcha green was a good fit with Wise’s distinctive colour palette which centres on vibrant greens.

The space also included a Wisdom Bar where visitors can speak directly with Wise specialists and explore the product in greater depth.

How do these types of activations fit into the marketing funnel?

Striking interactive environments such as these can work across the funnel. They can introduce new customers to the brand through distinctive design, generate leads and even lead to direct action such as sign ups and purchases.

For Wise’s activation, the merging of walls and ceiling and the use of a bold colour palette helped to present a striking point of difference visually. However, it was equally important to convey a complex message and to ensure Wise specialists supported visitors in exploring the product in greater depth through interactive devices, workshops and informative product sessions.

Rewards and exclusive merchandise can boost the shareability and make an experience more likely to be shared on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, but authenticity is critical. It’s important to focus on storytelling rather than selling to ensure authenticity and help to boost trust and credibility. The aim is to produce far more than a brand beacon; it’s a thematic world and must be an inclusive, human-centred experience.

As well as brand awareness and customer acquisition, such activations can also work as a testing ground and create a sense of excitement and community. Today we have such a wealth of opportunities – from large digital wrap screens that act as huge brand billboard attractors to 3D design and mixed reality. The only limit is our imagination.

What formats have you seen working in other sectors?

We’ve seen a number of formats from other brands across a range of sectors – from beauty to FMCG. What we’ve learnt is that tone and a well-thought through strategy is critical. What does the immersion want to convey? What do we want people to remember about the brand?

For Wise, design cues nodded to its global reach and experience – such as a Matcha Bar, created in collaboration with a customer. This took inspiration from contemporary Japanese matcha bars and was a perfect fit with Wise’s distinctive colour palette.

Brands often use colour effectively, but sometimes the message is not intrinsically tied to the brand and this waters down the impact. Being exploratory and immersive is critical, but so is a message that is digestible and that resonates not only through the choice of materials and formats but also through storytelling. The message must be clear, human, and transparent.

FMCG brands often use pop-up shops and immersive activations to launch new products, generate brand awareness, and create direct consumer engagement – such as the Anya Hindmarch x Boots pop-up store which featured a 1970s-inspired concept celebrating Boots’ pharmacy roots. Similarly, beauty brands may choose to promote limited-edition products.

But a word of warning: do not merely copy what competitors are doing. Whatever the type of brand, or the sector, it’s critical to lead with a strong and disruptive concept that is unique to your business. Focus on a USP that is easy for consumers to understand. Ideally this should be led by a truth or emotion and brands should always be thinking in terms of how they want consumers to feel as they engage and how this fits with the brand story.

Similarly, promotions and goodie bags can draw visitors in but these must not be the main feature. It’s important to target the appropriate consumer base and to create genuine moments with a disruptive idea rather than create merely a short-term buzz.

How can other financial brands can use these types of events?

We’d love to see more brands leveraging pioneering new pop up spaces. These spaces can be found in all sorts of locations and the element of novelty can be a bonus. For Wise, this was its first ever physical touchpoint and brand experience, but it does not necessarily need to be a first for any financial brand in terms of physical presence. The key is the point of difference and designing in a way which celebrates the brand’s USP and the consumer experience that it offers.

This is a fantastic opportunity for a sector that has often been accused of failing to engage effectively or excitingly. Wise has always been a brand that has sought to challenge the status quo and in the competitive world of financial services this is critical.

Given that we’re seeing an increase in the availability of immersive retail media spaces and an explosion in technological capabilities, there is no excuse not to carve out brand awareness through new touchpoints and experiences.

Consumers often love the element of surprise and discovery. Visually striking formats can really showcase a distinctive market proposition – but the key is that a brand knows what it stands for and how it wants to be known and recognised in the market. Design needs to be rooted in the market proposition and the brand experience – creating buzz, fostering connections and making memories through experiential environments and activations which enable interactive, hands-on product and service discovery and can help to build community.

The time-limited nature of pop ups can also drive a sense of scarcity and exclusivity and can turn visitors into brand ambassadors. This strategy can be used by financial brands in a type of ‘theatre’ but it’s important to not solely focus on transactions – instead seek to draw the customer in and then maintain engagement in the long term.