Drawing from an already accepted and put-into-action brand strategy for OTP Group, we needed to breathe life into the group's corporate communications across nine countries in the region.Before this, it wan’t working well. Some of the foreign banks acquired by OTP over the past 15 years have had experience working in a network with a foreign owner or headquarters, but these practices were significantly different from what OTP wanted to build. Group identity was only marginally present in the various countries—most employees were focused on their local operations' business and, at most, communication goals, with little awareness of the broader corporate objectives. There was no unified group experience or sense of identification with the group brand. Daily group-level communication cooperation was largely based on tradition and often relied on personal relationships.
We needed to create a solution that wasn’t just about implementing a corporate communications framework designed in Budapest across all markets. We had to build something that participants in every country would genuinely feel was their own, motivating them to operate it. The key to the solution was the intensive involvement of each country from the very beginning. Another major advantage was the support from FleishmanHillard’s London office: a senior partner with thirty years of international financial market experience joined our team, having already built several similar systems.
We began the project with leadership interviews: we interviewed the banking executives in each country, followed by OTP Bank’s central business unit heads, and finally, the communications leaders of the individual subsidiaries to gather their expectations, suggestions, and advice regarding the project. These interviews provided a wealth of useful information, which in some cases significantly altered the project's priorities and content. For example, we expanded the target groups and geographic focus areas to include elements from Western Europe and overseas markets, beyond the region
After gaining buy-in, we spent several months preparing and then conducted an intensive two-day series of in-person workshops. Together with the communications teams from each country, we built OTP Group's corporate communications narrative, thematic pillars, and key messages, starting from the existing group values and guided by their ideas and preferences. We also identified potential group-level initiatives based on these inputs. Over the following months, we refined and finalized the most important topics through multiple rounds of discussions, which will be the focus of group communication within and beyond the region in the coming years.
Alongside the content, we also developed the system: in several rounds of discussions with the communications leaders, we designed a flexible, tiered communication system that could be operated efficiently. In this system, each subsidiary participates in the planning of group-level communication, can contribute ideas and proposals during the process, and can execute communication campaigns at the group level or with participation from just a few countries. At the same time, clear rules govern the use of central content at the group level, with sufficient flexibility for local adaptation to ensure its effectiveness locally. We standardized the planning, tracking, and reporting processes and identified the necessary resources to operate the system.
The completed system design was approved by both OTP Bank’s communication leadership team and the bank’s governing bodies, and it has been implemented to establish group-level corporate communications. The subsidiary communications leaders who participated throughout the process provided positive feedback on both the process and the outcome. The system is now up and running, with its components being gradually introduced. Although fulfilling local business plans can sometimes divert the necessary resources, the intensive and inspiring collaborative effort to create the shared content and system elements has irreversibly set in motion the process that will transform OTP Group into a true community in the years to come.
