This finalist spotlight has been provided by mark-making.
Financial services has the power to change people’s lives. But often you wouldn’t know it from how it sells itself.
Complexity, pressure and regulation are part and parcel of the industry, but they’ve been defining it for too long, creating a world where brands are functional, cautious, and if we’re honest, forgettable. That’s the problem we exist to solve.
mark-making is an independent strategic and creative agency specialising in Financial Services, with a simple aim: to show FS for what it really is, by making it feel as human as the impact it actually has.
Be More Human, FFS* is our deliberately provocative rallying cry against the bland, the jargon, and the missed opportunity that still haunts too much financial services marketing.
And it’s the philosophy behind the work that earned us a place on this year’s Financial Promoter Awards shortlist.
The clearest recent example of this human-centric approach is Be More You for Pepper Money – an always-on brand campaign that never mentions a product.
The insight that unlocked it had nothing to do with mortgages. Research revealed that brokers were under extraordinary strain: relentless rate changes, product withdrawals, regulatory pressure spilling into their personal lives. Behind the broker they had to be was the person they wanted to be.
And Pepper, with its people-first philosophy and broker-led service model, was uniquely placed to acknowledge that.
Be More You was built on that truth. Through a flexible ‘more’ mechanic, the campaign shifts between professional empathy and personal empathy, giving Pepper a platform that works across every channel and every moment in a broker’s life.
The execution followed the thinking: candid visual storytelling, a Spotify playlist, Crystal Maze-inspired gamification at mortgage exhibitions, and most notably a series of holistic broker wellbeing Retreats featuring group exercise, nutrition talks, and mental health support.
The mortgage intermediary space had seen nothing like it before and the results rewarded the courage. In Ipsos’ Project Mercury, Pepper moved to #1 for Unprompted Willingness to Recommend, Brand Image, and Marketing Recall among specialist lenders.
In Pegasus Insight’s Connexion research, #1 for Unprompted Advertising Recall, Unprompted Event Recall, and ‘Personal Favourite’ specialist lender among brokers.
The same philosophy, different briefs
Be More Human looks different depending on the brief, but the conviction is always the same.
For The Mortgage Works, it meant finding the human truth in a complex rebrand: uniting two fragmented brand voices behind a new position and single, simple line – Landlords. We’re with you all the way. Rather than a product promise, it’s a statement of advocacy, helping TMW lead the UK buy-to-let market across four of five independently measured brand dimensions in 2025.
For Harpenden Building Society, it meant finding the human truth that a 170-year-old mutual could credibly own. In a market where building societies often retreat into generic positions around mutuality, Harpenden leaned into ‘confidence’.
And not as a strapline, but as a
genuine strategic platform rooted in attributes that stakeholders across every group already recognised: clarity, care and dependability.
For a Society that had always quietly delivered on those qualities, we developed an identity that turned up the volume.
What this shortlisting means
We’re a team of twelve. Every mark-maker has played a part in work that brought us here and recognition like this just affirms what we all believe in: that the human approach and the effective approach are not at odds in financial services – they’re one and the same.
Being part of the Financial Promoter community matters to us because it’s a community that understands the particular difficulty of doing brave, distinctive work in a sector that too often plays it safe.
A shortlisting here sends a signal we hope the wider industry hears: that Be More Human, FFS* isn’t just a philosophy but key to a thriving sector.
*For Financial Services – obviously
