UBS launched Crafted for You in December 2024, a cinematic brand campaign by Publicis Groupe Switzerland exploring legacy, succession and retirement across
ARCHIVEUBS Crafted for You Brings Cinematic Storytelling to Swiss Banking
UBS launched Crafted for You in December 2024 as a three-film cinematic extension of its global brand platform Advice is our craft, created by Publicis Groupe Switzerland, exploring themes of legacy, succession, and wealth planning across integrated channels in Switzerland and international markets.
The campaign arrives at a deliberate moment. As the year closes and individuals begin setting financial goals for the year ahead, UBS positions its advisory proposition not through product specifications but through human stories. Each of the three short films follows a distinct protagonist navigating a pivotal life transition — retirement and creative reinvention, generational business succession, and multigenerational wealth planning — with a trusted UBS financial advisor as the quiet but decisive presence at the centre of each narrative. The first film, A New Chapter, follows Frederic, a banker on the cusp of retirement who, guided by his advisor, chooses to exhibit his abstract paintings publicly for the first time. The second, Succession, traces Alex as she prepares to assume leadership of her family company alongside her father, charting a path forward with the help of their shared advisor. The third, Legacy, follows Jennifer and Manuel as they work with their advisor to build a financial future for their children and grandchildren.
In Switzerland, where UBS holds its headquarters and its deepest institutional roots, the campaign extends across print, digital out-of-home, and experiential activation, giving the cinematic work a physical presence in public space. The broader Advice is our craft platform, of which Crafted for You forms the narrative centrepiece, had already rolled out across twelve international markets since its January 2024 launch, according to reporting by Little Black Book. UBS described the overarching Banking is our craft campaign as its first global brand campaign since 2016, as noted by The Straits Times. Crafted for You carries a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100.
ARCHIVEUBS built Crafted for You on a core strategic insight. Wealthy individuals facing consequential life transitions — retirement, inheritance, succession — do not primarily want financial products; they want a trusted relationship with an advisor who understands what is actually at stake. The campaign gives that insight a narrative form, allowing viewers to see themselves in the characters rather than in an abstract value proposition.
The Advice is our craft platform was developed with brand-consulting firm Prophet alongside the Publicis Groupe Switzerland team known internally as TeamUBS, according to lbbonline.com. John McDonald, UBS Group CMO, stated publicly that the Craft campaign was designed to reflect the bank's brand strengths and the findings of sustained audience research, as documented on LinkedIn. That discipline — research-first, then creative expression — is visible in how precisely each of the three films maps to a distinct client archetype rather than a generic affluent demographic.
The competitive context sharpens the strategic intent. Morgan Stanley operates as one of the dominant wealth-management firms globally, particularly across the United States market, with deeply integrated adviser and brokerage capabilities that make advisor-client relationships central to its own positioning. Credit Suisse, absorbed into UBS following the 2023 merger, had previously occupied adjacent market space in Switzerland, leaving UBS to consolidate and clarify its brand voice for a newly enlarged client base. Against that backdrop, a campaign anchored in craft, trust, and personalised advice is not simply a creative choice — it is a competitive statement. The global wealth-management market generated revenue estimated at approximately US$2.03 trillion in 2024, forecast to grow to approximately US$2.68 trillion by 2028 at a compound annual growth rate of around 7.1 percent, according to researchandmarkets.com. Within that global landscape, Switzerland remains one of the most concentrated private-banking environments in the world, making brand differentiation among peers acutely important for UBS on home territory.
Edu Grau served as both director and cinematographer on Crafted for You, brought to the project by Radical Media. Grau's engagement began with an initial call from UBS and Radical Media in March 2024, according to brandinginasia.com, giving the production team roughly nine months to develop the visual language before the December 2024 launch. That runway is visible in the precision and coherence of the finished films.
Production spanned six days in total — four days in Vancouver and two days in Tokyo — as reported by brandinginasia.com. The geographic split is not arbitrary. The Tokyo location was used exclusively for the Alex story, the succession narrative, which was produced specifically for Asian territories. Vancouver provided the visual register for the retirement and legacy stories, its light and architecture lending both warmth and a sense of earned maturity appropriate to characters at inflection points in their lives. Shooting across two continents in six days demands a cinematographer with the technical authority to maintain tonal consistency across radically different locations and lighting conditions. Grau, whose prior work spans feature films and high-end commercial production, brings exactly that calibre of control.
The creative approach throughout Crafted for You prioritises emotional specificity over aspirational abstraction. Each film resists the temptation — common in financial advertising — to signify wealth through visual shorthand such as yachts, private jets, or expansive estates. Instead, the settings are intimate: a gallery, a family boardroom, a kitchen table. The advisor figure appears not as an authority dispensing wisdom from above but as a collaborator present at a genuinely difficult moment. That restraint is a creative decision with strategic weight. In Switzerland, where understatement is a cultural value as much as a design principle, the tone is precisely calibrated to the market the campaign calls home. The US premiere aired on Bloomberg and CNBC on December 9, 2024, according to lbbonline.com, signalling the campaign's ambition to reach internationally mobile, financially sophisticated audiences beyond Swiss borders.
No independently verified performance data for Crafted for You in terms of brand-lift metrics, media reach figures, or conversion outcomes is publicly available at the time of writing. What the public record does confirm is the scale of the platform it serves. UBS described Banking is our craft as its first global brand campaign since 2016, as noted by The Straits Times, and its rollout across twelve international markets since January 2024, according to lbbonline.com, represents a sustained commitment rather than a one-cycle effort. Crafted for You is the campaign's most cinematically ambitious execution to date.
The structural effectiveness of the work is considerable. Three distinct narrative arcs — each mapped to a clearly differentiated life stage and client profile — allow the campaign to demonstrate genuine range without fragmenting its brand message. Every film returns to the same core proposition: the UBS advisor as a skilled, present, and personalised partner. That repetition with variation is a hallmark of effective brand storytelling at scale. The multichannel deployment across print, digital out-of-home, and experiential activation in Switzerland ensures that the cinematic work is not confined to a screen but enters the physical environment of the audiences UBS most wants to reach. The US premiere placement on Bloomberg and CNBC on December 9, 2024, per lbbonline.com, extends that reach to the high-net-worth media environments where UBS competes for attention against Morgan Stanley and other global wealth managers. No award listings for Crafted for You have been confirmed across Cannes Lions, Effies, One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards at the time of publication. Clapboard rates the campaign 63 out of 100, reflecting a well-crafted execution that builds brand equity without yet demonstrating measurable performance differentiation from comparable financial category storytelling.
Crafted for You is a three-film cinematic brand campaign launched by UBS in December 2024. Created by Publicis Groupe Switzerland, it extends the global Advice is our craft platform by following three characters navigating retirement, business succession, and multigenerational wealth planning with the guidance of a UBS financial advisor.
Edu Grau directed and served as cinematographer on Crafted for You for Radical Media. Grau was first approached for the project in March 2024, according to brandinginasia.com. Production took place over six days across two locations: four days in Vancouver and two days in Tokyo.
Publicis Groupe Switzerland created Crafted for You for UBS. The campaign was developed by the agency's internal TeamUBS unit, working alongside brand-consulting firm Prophet, which helped shape the broader Banking is our craft platform, as reported by lbbonline.com. The campaign published in Switzerland in December 2024.
Clapboard rates UBS Crafted for You 63 out of 100. The score reflects a cinematically accomplished execution with strong narrative structure and clear strategic logic, set against the absence of publicly verified performance metrics and no confirmed award recognition at major shows including Cannes Lions or the Effies.
UBS Crafted for You was filmed in Vancouver and Tokyo. Production spanned six days in total, with four days in Vancouver and two in Tokyo, according to brandinginasia.com. The Tokyo footage was shot specifically for the Alex succession story, targeted at Asian territories as part of the campaign's twelve-market rollout.
Crafted for You is the cinematic centrepiece of UBS's Advice is our craft platform, which UBS described as its first global brand campaign since 2016, per The Straits Times. Launched in January 2024 and active across twelve markets, the platform positions personalised advisory relationships as the defining differentiator of the UBS brand in Switzerland and internationally.
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