The situation
Myanmar in 2015 was a country where fewer than 20% of the population had a bank account. Cash was king. And the banking industry had spent decades earning its poor reputation — through mismanagement, corporate corruption, and the financial crisis of 2008 that wiped out several institutions entirely.
Yoma Bank was one of the few to survive, but only by operating on a restricted remittance-only licence for nearly a decade. When their full banking licence was restored in 2015, they came to my team with what sounded like a marketing brief: announce their return with a campaign.
We quickly realised the brief was the wrong question. Before anyone could talk about campaigns, there was a more fundamental problem to solve: what kind of bank is Yoma, and who should they become? They hadn't operated as a full bank for ten years. The organisation, the staff, and the market had all moved on without them.
They asked for a campaign. We told them they needed to answer who they were before they could tell anyone about it.
5th
Largest bank in Myanmar after relaunch
<20%
Of Myanmar had a bank account at the time
10 yrs
Without a full banking licence before relaunch
Full
Rebrand — identity to interiors to digital
Understanding the problem first
My team spent considerable time on the ground in Myanmar conducting stakeholder interviews with board members, branch staff, and long-standing customers. We ran surveys and focus groups to understand existing brand perceptions — what people associated with the Yoma Bank name, and what they actually wanted from a bank.
The findings were stark. Trust was the central issue. A general population that had seen banks collapse, savings disappear, and institutions behave with impunity wasn't going to welcome a bank back with open arms based on advertising alone. The relaunch needed to feel genuine — human, transparent, accountable — or it would be dismissed.
The research also surfaced something the bank hadn't fully articulated: their own values. Integrity, stability, service, people. These weren't marketing words — they were the things the organisation actually believed in, and the things their surviving customers still associated with the bank despite everything. That became the foundation.
Brand identity
The brief for the identity was clear from the research: it needed to feel stable, responsible, and genuinely Myanmar — not a foreign bank operating in the country, but a Burmese institution with deep local roots. The tagline we landed on — The Responsible Bank — wasn't chosen for marketing reasons. It was the honest answer to the question the organisation needed to answer publicly.
I led the development of the complete brand identity: the mark, typography system, colour palette, and the comprehensive brand guidelines that would govern everything from branch signage to staff uniforms. The identity needed to work across an enormous range of applications — from business cards to billboards to branch interiors — and maintain consistency across a country where print production quality varied significantly.
The full scope
A bank rebrand isn't just a logo. Every customer touchpoint needed to be redesigned — from the moment someone approached a branch to the statement they received in the post. I managed the design and production across the full scope:
The launch campaign
The relaunch campaign was built around real people telling the bank's story from four different perspectives — a customer, a member of staff, a community member, and a board member. Not polished actors delivering scripted lines, but genuine voices speaking to what the bank meant to them and what they expected from it going forward.
This approach did two things: it demonstrated the bank's commitment to transparency and accountability in a way that advertising alone couldn't, and it gave the Myanmar public something they hadn't seen from a financial institution — a bank willing to stand behind real people's honest assessments of it.
The campaign ran across TV, radio, print, billboards, and digital — all designed with the same consistency as the broader brand system.
The outcome
Yoma Bank grew to become Myanmar's 5th largest bank following the relaunch. The brand identity and positioning established through this project remained in place for years afterward and became the foundation for the bank's subsequent growth.
This project is a reminder that the most important design work often happens before anything visual is produced. Getting the research right, asking the harder questions about identity and positioning, and building a brand on something true rather than something aspirational — that's what made the visual work land.