Standard Chartered Bank

In 2019 Standard Chartered Bank commissioned us to cast the brand voice for their global communications.
The brief was to reflect a thoughtful, intelligent, sophisticated and worldly-wise brand personality.
Given the huge variety of territories their advertising was to appear in, English was the language they chose for their communications. But what accent would be right for our brand voice?

We defined two territories:

International – a voice with a slight, hard to define Asian accent. Someone who had lived abroad and whose accent had softened.

Sophisticated – a voice synonymous with experience and excellence. An accent universally associated with global communication.

We considered approximately 200 actors from ten countries and recorded demos with ten. This helped narrow the territory further, focussing on a female voice with a mild British accent. We then demoed several more UK actresses, cast from the cream of British talent. This process allowed us to uncover Cherie Lunghi, star of theatre, TV and film.

Cherie possessed the exact tone, accent and range needed to deliver the wide variety of emotions that the bank wished to portray in its communications and she was ultimately selected as the global voice of Standard Chartered Bank. She continues to represent the bank on all their announcements to this day, ranging from the important safety and environmental work they have undertaken with Bangladeshi ship-yards to the initiatives they supported during the COVID-19 crisis.