Making premium banking feel earned rather than exclusive
ORIENTAL BANK
2024-2025
Product Strategy · Product Marketing · Product Campaign
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I led the product positioning and messaging, shaped the benefit hierarchy and communications architecture, wrote the strategic brief, and coordinated the work across Oriental and its creative agency.
Product Management
Product Positioning
Marketing Strategy
Creative Direction
Campaign Development
Product Communications
The Challenge
Elite was Oriental’s premium relationship account. It combined checking and savings while increasing benefits as customers brought more of their financial relationship to the bank. The product offered substantial value, but that value was difficult to explain. Seven balance levels, multiple thresholds, and a long list of benefits placed the burden on customers and sales teams to calculate what Elite could do for them. Without a clearer story, the account risked sounding like another premium product built around status and exclusivity.
The Insight
Elite’s most distinctive idea was recognition. The account considered eligible balances across deposits and investments, then returned more value as the relationship grew. Benefits included higher savings interest, cash back on qualifying Oriental loan payments, fee reimbursements, concierge support, and financial guidance. Each benefit expressed the same underlying principle: A customer’s effort and relationship with the bank should be recognized with practical value.
Audience research added another dimension. Affluent customers could earn more money, but they could not create more time. Convenience, anticipation, and relief from administrative friction could therefore be as valuable as another financial reward.
The Strategy
Translation: Maximize your financial power.
Elite was positioned as a relationship that grows with the customer. The communications hierarchy moved away from product levels and led with what customers received: more value from their money, more support when needs became complex, and less friction in managing their finances.
The product mechanics remained unchanged. What changed was the way they were understood.
Rather than asking customers to navigate seven tiers, the story presented one simple progression: consolidate eligible products and balances, strengthen the relationship, and receive increasing value in return.
Taking It to Market
The campaign platform, Maximize your finances, connected the product’s financial and emotional benefits. Messaging was developed in English and Spanish and organized across awareness, consideration, conversion, and relationship deepening. Paid media, owned channels, branch communications, and sales materials followed the same hierarchy.
This gave customers a clearer explanation of the offer and provided sales teams with a more consistent way to describe how combined balances determined benefits.
The Results
Elite helped Oriental express premium banking as an active relationship rather than a static status tier.
Early 2025 materials report more than $57 million in combined deposits across Elite and My Biz. Because the figure covers both products, it should be treated as a shared portfolio result until an Elite-specific breakdown is available.