I Like a Bank

Business banking has become a category in which nobody actually likes their bank — and everyone's decided that's just how it is. Allica Bank's first major brand campaign, from London creative shop 20(Something), is built around that single observation. The films drop Allica's named relationship managers directly inside the premises of their SME customers — a carpet shop, a bakery, a factory — locked-off camera, minimal dialogue, small crackles of visual eccentricity. The deadpan is the point. In a category dominated by abstract cinematic metaphors and feature-and-rate shouting, restraint reads as competence. The rep knows the business. The business owner doesn't have to explain. The humour comes from what isn't said. Strategically this is a counter-positioning play against two failed models at once — high street banks that scaled back relationship service, and digital challengers that traded it for speed. Allica, just made a $1.2B unicorn in February, built its stack from scratch and put humans back on the end of the phone. The takeaway for the category: when every competitor is competing on feature density or rate, the differentiator worth buying media for is tone. Being the bank that sounds like it listens is a product claim, not a brand veneer.