How it started

HSBC Indonesia wanted to deepen its connection with Millennial customers in Indonesia and develop products and services that truly reflected their needs. But early assumptions painted Millennials as carefree, outgoing and overly aspirational. This picture didn’t capture the full reality. HSBC needed to go beyond demographics and understand who these young adults really were.

How we inspired change

We tapped into the ongoing insight community we’ve been running for HSBC since 2018. Through surveys, forums and digital immersions with hundreds of Indonesian Millennials, we uncovered fresh opportunities for the brand.

In a series of interactive digital workshops with 30 HSBC marketing stakeholders, we brought these insights to life using visual personas and live “digital dating” sessions, before guiding teams into ideation and proposition development.

How it lives on

From this work, we developed a set of personas underpinned by a framework articulating their financial mindset. The research revealed a more nuanced picture: many Indonesian Millennials were far more pragmatic and responsibility‑driven than expected, shaped by family obligations, cultural values, religious beliefs and economic pressures. Their financial needs reflected resilience and realism as much as aspiration.

We translated these insights into a set of “How Might We” opportunity statements, which became the springboard for ideation. Together with the HSBC team, we developed early propositions and refined them into consumer‑facing concepts, which were then validated quantitatively within the community.

The result was a richer, more grounded understanding of Indonesian Millennials and a clearer path for HSBC to design products and experiences that genuinely resonate with this generation.