By RumboCierto Comunicaciones
Bank of Palestine, the largest private bank in Palestine, sought to position itself in Chile -because this country is home to the largest community of descendants of Palestinians living outside their country- to attract businesses from Latin America to the region, and thus contributing to the Palestinian economic development.
The requirement for RumboCierto was to define the best strategy for communicating its landing in Chile, create closeness with its target audience, and that this eventually resulted in concrete results for the entity not only at the financial level but also in terms of its positioning. Finally, to build loyalty among the bank’s own customers after seeing the social work it carries out given the singularity of its population living under occupation.
The strategy defined was to sensitize the more than 500 thousand descendants of Palestinians living in Chile, so that they feel proud of the land of their forefathers and are able to contribute to the development of the Palestinian economy. To this end, trips of prominent Palestinians were organized for them to come and tell their entrepreneurship stories in Chile, as well as Palestinians descendants in Chile travelling to Palestine.
In a second phase, the idea was to form networks with Palestinians businessman or professionals through the bank for it to become an investment bridge between Chile and Palestine. Here it was very important to report that BOP opened a representative office in Dubai. The message delivered was to unite two continents through business: Latin America and the Middle East. To that end, Chile will be used as hub to get the attention of other Palestinian communities in Latin and Central America, as a success story.
The market was divided into two segments, which were approached in different ways: a group of young professionals, whose fathers were prominent Palestinian businessmen living in Chile who still have family and land in Palestine. They were invited to visit the region with an agenda prepared by BOP (Direct PR). They idea was that they could then share their experiences in Chile with other professionals.
The less well-off segment, which was also more distant because it had more generations in Chile, was sensitized through sports: BOP sponsored the Palestine Football Club shirt in Chile, which allowed it to be in the top spots at the national championships, and also to wear a shirt with the company’s brand. (marketing PR)
All this is accompanied by education campaigns that showed the other face of Palestine, not only suffering but also those professionals that studied in Europe and returned to their country to contribute. Niche media of the Palestine community in Chile was used for this purpose, as well as the sponsor of the main event of the Belen 2000 Foundation in Chile  (Maklube dinner) that supports Palestine orphans in Gaza. BOP’s top executives travelled from Palestine to attend the event and showed that it is a transparent, reliable, safe and close bank, telling that 5% of its profits go every year to support Palestinian children. (Campaign)
On the other side, the most enterprising sector was invited to participate in an entrepreneurship competition donating their time as juries and choosing entrepreneurship projects from Palestinians that wanted to start their small- and medium companies, and the bank helped the winner to materialize its project in Palestine, while these professionals would mentor the winning projects. (Contest)
Finally, the bank’s growth and expansion in Palestine was made known through social networking. This thanks to groups of friends in Facebook in Chile that followed the bank’s social responsibility actions. (Media and Social)
A large number of the Palestine population in Chile know the brand and its attributes, and have given it its support. The bank will open a representative office in Chile in 2017, as it already has an adequate positioning in the country and a large support network that has traveled to Palestine as part of the various entrepreneur and executive tours that have been organized by the bank to know the region.
This success story was not only reported in Chile but also to its clients in Palestine and other potential customers in Latin and Central America.
Furthermore, a variety of enterprises, businesses, professional partnerships and exchange among Palestinians in Palestine and in Chile were created.
