We have now completed four 'Innovation' branches for Bendigo Bank since 2019 with the latest in their home town of Bendigo.

Norwood SA - 2019
Leichhardt NSW - 2020
Leichhardt NSW - 2020
Carlton VIC - 2020
Bendigo VIC - 2021
Positioned in the front of every new branch, Retail Pop-Up has launched hundreds of small businesses across Australia.

Background

Our experience with Bendigo Bank has changed our narrative from the usual ‘Customer centric’ or ‘Immersive experiences’ to a theme with a higher purpose: Community.

The approach of delivering on the needs of a community no matter where or who it is, has become important to our work. Whether community refers to the place in which a brand operates or the commonalities that bind a community of customers together, that which we have in common is a strong and increasingly important theme for brands to demonstrate their purpose around.

Bendigo Bank are creating a new kind of banking relationship where brand trust is built through catering to local community needs.
We created a brand new non-banking role called a LEO (Local engagement officer) who's role was to integrate the purpose of the brand into the local community using social media as a platform to publish the events they held.
Leichardtt is the first innovation branch to full adopt the idea of exposing customers to the creative process rather than just showing them the finished results.

 

Challenge

We have developed a new approach to community. Rather than seeing who lives there and what type of customer they could be, the bank now looks at where the community is in its ‘health cycle’. For example, Leichhardt is currently emerging from a low ebb in the health and wellbeing of its’ community. Having suffered heavily since 2014 from the lockout laws and again since 2020 with COVID, there is much work to do in resuscitating the community behind this once thriving street scene.

Engaging like minded builders and craftspeople to procure the branch is just one of the strategies we have adopted to demonstrate an authentic approach to rebuilding the community. The bank does not see it’s role as dominant or heroic in this quest but recessive, supportive and collaborative as part of a group of local businesses who are already on this path.

We engaged local artist Shannon Crees (https://www.instagram.com/shannoncrees/?hl=en) to create the largest mural she’s ever done for the garden space.

 

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