From Crime Scenes to Spaceshots, OTP Bank's Got You Covered

There's a heartsick human statue, too

You’re on a mission to the rings of Saturn, and your credit card floats away across the firmament into the vastness of infinity. Thankfully, Euro bank OTP’s got you covered. Its app lets you freeze spending on that lost plastic and order a replacement immediately. Bump up your credit limit—you’re an astronaut, you’ve earned it!

A celestial scenario plays out in one of three spots breaking this week from Accenture’s Droga5 Dublin and director Thomas Ormonde.

Each film presents OTP’s services with an appealing mix of humor and utility. We get sharp storytelling sans dialogue, slick sound stylings and just enough comedy to lock eyeballs on the screen.

First, a costly walk in space:

Well, one of them will get back to Earth, that’s the important thing. Next, a hot crime scene proves that splitting the bill can be murder:

Finally, a jilted teen freezes like a statue in the park and starts a love affair with money:

“OTP is one of the big, traditional banks in Europe. But being around for so long had started to work against them,” Droga5 CCO Jen Speirs tells Muse. “The brand had become a bit like wallpaper, especially with all the shiny new fintechs coming into the market. We thought there was an opportunity to make OTP’s stability feel like a strength. Because let’s face it, with everything going on in the world, one crisis after another, having a bank you can actually depend on is a pretty good thing.”

“We were talking to a really broad audience, across lots of different countries. So, we needed one idea that could work everywhere and make OTP feel like one big, recognizable brand,” she says. “And the idea was simple. Life is unpredictable. But OTP is ready for anything. We just thought it would be fun to take that promise very literally.”

Speirs describes the videos as “product stories”—and that’s true. They mirror Apple’s knack for couching demos in compelling narratives that entertain and inform in equal measure.

In addition to the videos, Droga5 revamped OTP’s visual identity, with design elements and OOH playing into the mix.

Here, agency CD Alex Ingarfield take us inside the work:

These are funny, but not OTT. There’s some restraint at play.

The whole idea was about OTP being ready for literally anything, so the situations had to be pretty wild and absurd. But we felt the more ridiculous the situation, the more seriously we needed to treat it or we’d be trying too hard to be funny. And no one likes a try-hard. So, we played everything completely straight, from the performances to the cinematography and sound.

The lack of dialogue makes these better, I think.

It was a very practical decision. The campaign needed to work across 11 countries that all speak different languages. Dubbing would have compromised the creative, so we decided our creative parameters early on.

That statue-kid falling down was a highlight.

We made a dummy to match the actor’s exact height and build, then dressed it identically and knocked it over. The real actor was then wired up, lowered and lifted to capture plates for face replacement. The amazing team in Stray brought it all together in post.

The detective clip is very realistic.

We had a real forensic scientist advising us on the protective suits worn by crime scene investigators.

And you really sent actors into space, correct?

We built part of the space station for real, with everything else created in CG. The 20kg spacesuit was originally made for Clint Eastwood’s Space Cowboys, using the same material as real NASA suits. It even came with its own technician. We also hired a movement coach to help our actor recreate zero gravity.

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