Julius Baer's 'Looking Back to the Future' film by Farner ages Formula E driver Jérôme D'Ambrosio 40 years to make the case for sustainable investing in
ARCHIVEJulius Baer Sends Jérôme D'Ambrosio Forty Years Into the Future
Julius Baer's "Looking Back to the Future" is a 2019 Swiss finance film created by Farner that ages Formula E driver Jérôme D'Ambrosio approximately forty years to illustrate how visionary investing today could reshape the world of tomorrow.
Published in Switzerland in March 2019, the campaign centres on a single, carefully constructed film asset. Julius Baer, the Zurich-headquartered private banking group, used its existing Formula E sponsorship as both a narrative anchor and a credibility mechanism. The strategic proposition underlying the entire platform, as documented on juliusbaer.com, is direct: "How we invest today is how we live tomorrow." That line does not merely describe wealth management; it positions Julius Baer as an institution whose financial decisions carry civilisational consequence.
The film visualises Zurich landmarks reimagined with autonomous vehicles, suspended railways, robots, drones, digital traffic systems, and greener architecture, according to Farner Ch. This is not an abstract utopia. By grounding the vision in recognisable Swiss geography, the campaign makes its argument tangible for an affluent domestic audience already accustomed to Julius Baer's presence in the city. In Switzerland, where private banking is a foundational industry and long-term wealth stewardship is culturally embedded, the message lands with particular resonance. The campaign sits within a broader future-oriented platform that Julius Baer developed around the 2018 Zurich E-Prix, per juliusbaer.com, carrying momentum from that live event into a filmed narrative designed to sustain the conversation about sustainable investment well beyond race day.
Julius Baer built the campaign's strategic rationale on a clear consumer insight: high-net-worth individuals increasingly connect the performance of their portfolios to the condition of the world their wealth will inhabit. Philipp Skrabal, Partner and Chief Creative Officer at Farner, articulated the platform precisely, stating: "We developed a strategic and creative platform predicated on the idea that how we invest today shapes our future," as cited on adsoftheworld.com. That insight transforms a conventional wealth management brief into a purpose-driven proposition.
The competitive context in Switzerland and across the global private banking landscape is formidable. UBS, Julius Baer's most prominent Swiss competitor, operates at a scale that dwarfs most peers; according to asianprivatebanker.com, UBS's Asian private-banking assets under management reached approximately US$560 billion in 2020, a figure that illustrates the resource asymmetry Julius Baer navigates. Credit Suisse, another direct Swiss competitor, held approximately US$251 billion in Asian private-banking assets under management in the same period, per asianprivatebanker.com. Against rivals of this scale, Julius Baer's decision to compete on narrative intelligence rather than balance-sheet size reflects a sound strategic choice. Formula E offered a ready-made symbol: a motorsport category built entirely on the premise that performance and sustainability are not opposites, which mirrors precisely the argument Julius Baer wishes to make about modern investing.
According to farner.ch, the 2019 campaign extended the momentum Julius Baer had built from the 2018 Zurich E-Prix, ensuring that the sponsorship investment generated durable brand equity rather than a single event impression. In Switzerland, where institutional credibility is a prerequisite for client trust in the finance sector, anchoring a forward-looking message to a verifiable, science-driven sporting partnership was a strategically coherent move.
The creative execution of "Looking Back to the Future" rests on one precise visual idea. Jérôme D'Ambrosio, a serving Formula E driver at the time of production, is portrayed approximately forty years older, standing in a future version of Zurich that has been transformed by the very technologies his sport represents, according to adsoftheworld.com. The year implied by that projection is approximately 2060, giving the campaign a specific temporal destination rather than a vague aspiration.
Philipp Skrabal, Farner's Chief Creative Officer, described the ambition behind the execution as quoted on adsoftheworld.com: "It's a creative opportunity I could only dream of: we were able to show concretely how life in our city could change as a result of new technology becoming part of our everyday lives." That phrase — "our city" — is deliberate. By grounding the futurist imagery in Zurich's actual topography, Farner prevented the film from drifting into the kind of generic science-fiction iconography that would have diluted the Swiss banking brand's authority.
Jonas Brändli, Senior Consultant at Farner, elaborated on the tonal balance the team sought, stating as cited on adsoftheworld.com: "We wanted to balance the technical and the emotional." Brändli further noted that the images presented in the campaign are inspired by the real trajectory of urban and technological development, lending the visualisation a degree of research credibility rather than pure fantasy. The ageing makeup and prosthetics applied to D'Ambrosio serve a structural function beyond spectacle: they make time itself the medium of the argument. A viewer does not read about the future; they see a person who has lived through it. Production credits beyond the named Farner creative leadership are not fully documented across public sources, though farner.ch confirms the film was produced by Farner Consulting, Zurich.
ARCHIVENo independently verified performance data for "Looking Back to the Future" — such as reach figures, brand-lift scores, or conversion metrics — is publicly available at the time of writing. The analysis that follows is therefore structural rather than empirical.
According to farner.ch, the broader Julius Baer campaign of which this film forms a part became one of the bank's most recognised brand initiatives of the period, a qualitative signal that the platform resonated within the Swiss finance market even if granular numbers have not been disclosed. The campaign's architecture supports that claim. A single, high-production film asset concentrates investment into one memorable execution rather than diffusing it across fragmented formats — a rational choice for a private bank whose audience is narrow, attentive, and values depth over volume.
The use of Jérôme D'Ambrosio as a human time-traveller creates an inherently shareable narrative device. In Switzerland, where Julius Baer competes against institutionally dominant players such as UBS, brand distinctiveness is a measurable strategic asset even when it resists easy quantification. The campaign's submission to Ads of the World under the Finance and Film categories, as documented on adsoftheworld.com, confirms it was recognised within the creative industry as a notable execution. The Clapboard Score for "Looking Back to the Future" is 63 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that demonstrates clear strategic coherence and creative precision but stops short of the transformative cultural impact that would place it in the highest tier of finance advertising.
"Looking Back to the Future" is a 2019 Swiss finance film created by Farner for Julius Baer. The film ages Formula E driver Jérôme D'Ambrosio approximately forty years to visualise how sustainable investing today could reshape Zurich and the wider world by approximately 2060, per adsoftheworld.com.
Farner Consulting, Zurich created the campaign. Philipp Skrabal, Partner and Chief Creative Officer at Farner, led the creative platform, with Jonas Brändli, Senior Consultant, contributing to the strategic and emotional balance of the execution, as documented on adsoftheworld.com and farner.ch.
Julius Baer used D'Ambrosio because its Formula E sponsorship provided a credible symbol of performance and sustainability combined. Ageing D'Ambrosio to approximately 2060 made the bank's strategic proposition — that how we invest today shapes how we live tomorrow — concrete and emotionally immediate rather than abstract.
The campaign's core proposition is "How we invest today is how we live tomorrow," per juliusbaer.com. It argues that visionary, sustainable investment decisions made now will determine the quality of urban and social life in the future, positioning Julius Baer as a forward-thinking Swiss private bank.
According to farner.ch, the 2019 film extended a future-oriented platform Julius Baer developed around the 2018 Zurich E-Prix. The campaign transformed a single sponsorship event into a durable brand narrative about sustainable investing, ensuring the Formula E partnership generated lasting equity in the Swiss finance market.
The Clapboard Score for "Looking Back to the Future" is 63 out of 100. The score reflects strong strategic coherence and a precise creative device but indicates the campaign does not reach the highest tier of culturally transformative finance advertising, as assessed by Clapboard's editorial team.
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