Bank+Mice - Story About Kindness - ForteBank | Clapboard Ad Archive

ForteBank’s 2019 digital campaign Bank+Mice - Story About Kindness, created by Kombinat for the Kazakhstani finance sector, exemplifies agile crisis management through narrative reinvention, transforming a potentially damaging viral incident into a testament to brand empathy and community connection. When a harsh winter in Astana drove mice to seek shelter inside a ForteBank ATM, leading to footage of rodents chewing on cash emblazoned with the bank’s logo circulating on a prominent Instagram community, the brand faced an immediate reputational threat around ATM reliability. Instead of distancing itself or downplaying the event, Kombinat seized the moment to build a FORMAT#6—Benefit Causes Story—where the bank’s benevolent intervention and care for the mice became the central narrative vehicle. By positioning ForteBank as a guardian figure that not only ensured the mice’s safety during the severe blizzard but also took tangible action by rescuing them and hosting them at its headquarters, the campaign recontextualized the story into one of kindness and responsibility. This empathetic framing was amplified through strategic dissemination with key Kazakhstani media and social channels on VK and Instagram, generating widespread positive engagement and media coverage that shifted public perception from skepticism to goodwill. The campaign’s single digital asset, leveraging authentic user-generated content and subsequent official documentation of the mice’s journey, humanized the bank in a way that conventional financial advertising seldom achieves, rooting ForteBank’s reliability in real-world compassion rather than sterile messaging. This approach underlines the power of responsive storytelling in the finance category where trust is paramount and crises can escalate rapidly. Clapboard rates this campaign 63/100. This campaign matters to the industry because it demonstrates how financial brands can harness unexpected viral moments and craft them into narratives that reinforce trust through authentic human values rather than product-centric claims.