When marketing starts at product design
In traditional financial services, marketing is often brought in at the end of the process to communicate products designed around internal banking conventions. During the greenfield creation of CheBanca!—launched by Mediobanca Group to enter retail banking—we reversed that sequence: consumer insight and marketing thinking were embedded directly into the financial mechanics, naming and pricing of the products.
Interessi Anticipati: the psychology of instant gratification
Every savings account on the market followed the same convention: customers locked up their liquidity and waited twelve months to receive their interest. Looking at the category through a consumer lens revealed a simple behavioural truth: immediate gratification is far more motivating than a deferred reward.
Paying interest upfront the moment a customer deposited funds turned a passive financial contract into an immediate, tangible reward—while remaining financially neutral for the bank’s treasury.
By inventing Interessi Anticipati (upfront interest), customers saw their return credited immediately and could spend or reinvest it on day one. For the bank, discounting the interest payout to day zero carried virtually no additional cost compared to a standard maturity payout, yet it created a distinctive commercial proposition that accelerated liquidity inflows and word of mouth.
Conto Tascabile: lightness in naming and €1 simplicity
Traditional current accounts were perceived as heavy, bureaucratic and opaque. To signal a clean break from legacy banking, we designed and named Conto Tascabile ("Pocket Account"): a colour-coded prepaid account card equipped with a full bank IBAN capable of handling salary credits, direct debits and transfers.
Calling it Tascabile immediately conveyed everyday utility, modernity and lightness—reinforced by a single, transparent flat fee of €1 per month. The product name and pricing architecture did the communication work before a single technical feature needed to be explained.
Omnichannel by design: digital speed meets physical trust
Launching a challenger bank required digital velocity, but moving personal savings also required deep institutional trust. Instead of choosing between a pure-play online bank and a traditional branch network, we built an integrated omnichannel model from day one—combining a self-serve digital and phone platform with high-street physical spaces designed with the warmth, open layout and hours of modern retail stores.