The most mobile bank in the Netherlands - ING | Clapboard Ad Archive

ING’s 2016 campaign The most mobile bank in the Netherlands, developed with JWT, illustrates the creative power of a brand owning its innovation narrative by making not just a product but the medium itself a live demonstration of capability. As mobile usage became mainstream in the banking sector, ING leveraged its market leadership to launch a digital campaign defined by a single asset: an exclusively vertical film engineered for the iPhone and Android screens that now dominated everyday banking experiences. This overt calibration to mobile-first viewing, realized in the Netherlands’ highly competitive finance industry, served as the campaign’s core message and execution in one: ING is as flexible and accessible as the digital behaviors of its customers. In an era when most financial advertisers clung to landscape film conventions, ING and JWT instead inverted expectations in a move that did more than simply accommodate the device — it validated the shift in the locus of user attention, positioning ING not just as present within mobile trends but as architecting them. The strategy sits squarely in what Clapboard’s taxonomy classifies as FORMAT#1—Demonstration, where the creative choice is less about narrative flourish and more about directly evidencing how product utility syncs with real user needs. There is no superfluous story arc, character showcase, or staged problem-solution; the form of the work and the user’s interaction with it become the proof, reinforcing ING’s claim to mobility and immediate access. The campaign’s focus on seamless vertical experience eliminated all friction between message and medium, deepening trust and familiarity for a digitally-native audience and succinctly conveying ING’s agility in adapting traditional communication playbooks to the realities of 2016 smartphone use. JWT’s role as agency underscored a strategic approach rooted in consumer insight, as the campaign made brand leadership a felt experience for anyone simply hitting play. Critically catalogued by Clapboard, the campaign earns 56/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. This campaign matters because it marks the moment a legacy banking brand fully aligned its creative execution to the new behaviors of a mobile-first generation, demonstrating to the industry that relevance is won not by talking about innovation but by building it directly into the audience’s hands.