ForteBank Turns a Rodent Incident Into a Viral Kindness Campaign
ForteBank's "Bank+Mice – Story About Kindness" is a January 2019 digital campaign created by Almaty-based agency Kombinat in Kazakhstan, in which a genuine incident of mice entering a bank ATM during a blizzard was reframed as a corporate act of compassion and distributed across Kazakhstani social and news media.
The incident itself was unplanned. Mice entered a ForteBank ATM in Astana during a winter storm and damaged banknotes inside the machine. Rather than issue a routine damage report or allow the story to circulate on unfavorable terms, Kombinat recognised an opportunity to reframe the narrative entirely. The agency repositioned the bank not as a victim of property damage, but as a rescuer of small animals seeking shelter from harsh conditions. The mice were located, placed in a cage, and brought to ForteBank's head office, where they were photographed and the images prepared for social distribution.
The campaign's mechanics were deliberately understated. According to adsoftheworld.com, the team sent a link to the original post — which had already begun circulating organically — to top Kazakhstani media outlets on behalf of ordinary users, attaching a comment framing the rodents as blizzard refugees now safely housed by the bank. The media picked up the news hook with that editorial framing intact. What began as a liability became a shareable story about institutional warmth. The Clapboard Score for the campaign is 63/100, reflecting strong conceptual ingenuity offset by limited documented reach data. The campaign ran exclusively in the digital medium and represents one of the more inventive examples of reactive PR-driven content to emerge from the Kazakhstan finance industry in the 2019 cycle.
Kombinat identified a single, perishable insight: the story already existed in the public domain. The agency's strategic role was not to manufacture a narrative but to control the one already forming. According to adsoftheworld.com, the team made a deliberate choice to spread the story as one about kindness rather than allowing it to settle into the more obvious framing of institutional mishap or negligence. That decision — to lead with the rescue rather than the damage — is the entire strategic engine of the campaign.
The context in which ForteBank was operating matters. As of September 1, 2019, ForteBank ranked fourth among Kazakhstan's five largest banks by assets, holding 1.8 trillion KZT in assets and representing 11.4% of the combined top-five asset pool, according to Banker Kz. Halyk Bank dominated the market with 8.5 trillion KZT in assets, accounting for approximately 53.6% of top-five bank assets per the same source, and roughly a third of the full banking sector as of January 2020, according to Halykbank Kz. Kaspi Bank, another principal competitor in the Kazakhstan digital finance space, held 2.0 trillion KZT in assets at the same date, according to banker.kz. In this environment, ForteBank faced the structural challenge common to fourth-ranked institutions: how to generate meaningful brand salience without the market-weight of category leaders.
The Bank+Mice campaign answered that challenge by competing on emotional register rather than scale. A story about a bank rescuing mice costs almost nothing to produce and requires no media budget if the editorial hook is sharp enough. Kombinat's positioning of ForteBank as a human, warm institution — capable of pausing operational concerns to care for animals — addressed a perception deficit that no rate comparison or product launch could have resolved as efficiently. The campaign sits within a longer creative partnership: per Kombinat Agency, Kombinat has worked with ForteBank since 2016, with prior campaigns including award-winning social and PR work at the Ak Mergen PR Awards and the Red Jolbors festival.
Kombinat built the Bank+Mice execution around the logic of earned media rather than paid distribution. The creative approach treated an unscripted real-world event as raw material, then applied a precise editorial reframe to shape how that material would be received. According to adsoftheworld.com, the agency's narrative statement was direct: "We decided to make a story about kindness out of this and helped to spread it." That sentence contains the entire creative brief — find the warmer story inside the embarrassing one, then give it the right container and the right channel.
The production was intentionally minimal. The mice were found, a cage was purchased, and the animals were brought to ForteBank's headquarters in Kazakhstan. Photographs were taken at the office and prepared for social distribution. The choice to photograph the mice at the bank's own premises — rather than releasing them or simply reporting them removed — was a meaningful creative decision. It made the bank the setting of the rescue, placing institutional space in service of a small act of care and producing imagery that was inherently shareable without requiring high production value.
The distribution strategy was equally considered. According to adsoftheworld.com, the team seeded the content by sending the original post link to top Kazakhstani media as though from ordinary users, attaching the blizzard-shelter framing as editorial comment. This approach mirrored the mechanics of organic virality while ensuring the preferred narrative was embedded from the first point of media contact. Production credits for the Bank+Mice campaign are not publicly documented beyond the agency attribution to RA Kombinat, Almaty, Kazakhstan. No director, creative director, or photographer has been identified by name in available records, including listings on adsoftheworld.com, kombinat.agency, or goldendrum.com. The campaign contains one media asset, per adsoftheworld.com, consistent with the single-image social content format the strategy required.
The Bank+Mice campaign earned a Silver award at the White Square Festival 2019 in category C1: Use of PR Practice, as documented by 2019 Adfest By. This is the campaign's most precisely attributed recognition and places it among awarded PR-led work from across the CIS advertising market in that cycle. Per kombinat.agency, the campaign also received a Silver in the Single Channel Campaigns category and a Shortlist in User Generated Content in Visual Storytelling at a 2019 awards event listed in the agency's own record. Additionally, according to goldendrum.com, the Bank+Mice campaign appeared in the Golden Drum festival showcase, though the specific award level and category are not confirmed in available results from that festival.
No verified third-party performance data for the Bank+Mice campaign — including reach figures, engagement rates, or share volume — is publicly available. What the awards record does confirm is that the campaign was recognised specifically for its PR mechanics, which aligns with the structural reading of the work: its value resided in narrative control and earned media placement rather than in paid distribution metrics. The White Square Silver in Use of PR Practice is a category judgment that validates the strategic reframe as the campaign's primary achievement. For a digitally distributed, single-asset execution produced with minimal production expenditure, industry recognition at this level represents a meaningful return. Within the broader ForteBank and Kombinat creative partnership, which per kombinat.agency spans work from 2016 onward and includes multiple festival-awarded campaigns, Bank+Mice stands as the clearest example of the agency converting an unplanned incident into structured brand value for a fourth-ranked bank competing in a concentrated Kazakhstan market.
The Bank+Mice campaign is a January 2019 digital campaign by ForteBank and Kombinat in Kazakhstan. Mice entered a ForteBank ATM in Astana during a blizzard and damaged banknotes. Kombinat reframed the incident as a rescue story, photographed the mice at headquarters, and distributed the narrative to Kazakhstani media, according to adsoftheworld.com.
RA Kombinat, an Almaty-based advertising agency in Kazakhstan, created the campaign. Kombinat has worked with ForteBank since 2016, per kombinat.agency. No individual creative credits — including director or creative director — are publicly documented for this specific campaign across available records including adsoftheworld.com and kombinat.agency.
Bank+Mice won a Silver in category C1: Use of PR Practice at White Square Festival 2019, per 2019.adfest.by. Per kombinat.agency, it also received a Silver in Single Channel Campaigns and a Shortlist in User Generated Content in Visual Storytelling. The campaign appeared in the Golden Drum festival showcase, according to goldendrum.com.
Kombinat sent the original post link to top Kazakhstani media as though from ordinary users, attaching the narrative that mice had sheltered from a blizzard and were now safe at ForteBank headquarters, according to adsoftheworld.com. The media adopted this framing, generating earned coverage without paid media placement behind the content.
ForteBank ranked fourth among Kazakhstan's five largest banks by assets as of September 2019, holding 1.8 trillion KZT in assets and 11.4% of the top-five pool, according to banker.kz. Halyk Bank led with 53.6% of top-five assets. This competitive position shaped the brand's need for emotionally resonant, low-cost awareness campaigns.
The Clapboard Score for Bank+Mice is 63 out of 100. The score reflects strong conceptual ingenuity in Kombinat's narrative reframing of an unplanned incident, offset by the absence of publicly verified performance data such as reach, engagement, or share metrics for the Kazakhstan digital campaign.
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