John McDonald joins from UBS to lead marketing and brand across the four HSBC primary businesses.
HSBC has named a new CMO to oversee global functions in its bid to become “a more simple, agile and focused bank”.
John McDonald will join on 1 October in the newly created global CMO role, which brings together marketing and brand across the four HSBC primary businesses under a unified leadership for the first time.
In his role, McDonald will be responsible for shaping and delivering HSBC’s marketing, branding and client engagement across the four businesses – international wealth and premier banking, corporate and institutional banking, Hong Kong and the UK. Marketing teams for all four businesses will report into McDonald.
McDonald is currently the group CMO at UBS and previously served as senior vice-president of global integrated marketing and communications at Mastercard. Before this he held senior roles at WPP, British Airways and OgilvyOne.
“We are excited to welcome John whose depth and range of experience will be invaluable – not only as we increase our focus on wealth, but as we accelerate growth, increase market share and build an even more distinctive brand that resonates with current and future clients across our businesses and markets globally,” says HSBC CEO of international wealth and premier banking, Barry O’Byrne.
In a LinkedIn post, McDonald described it as a “pivotal time” to join the bank and stated his intention to contribute to HSBC’s “transformation”.
McDonald’s appointment comes as HSBC has relaunched its private bank and premier services, and rebranded its corporate and institutional banking business. Recent global activations have included a refreshed airport strategy, resulting in a media presence across 23 global airports.
The news also comes as HSBC UK CMO Becky Moffat was promoted in June to chief customer officer for wealth and customer banking, retaining her CMO position for HSBC UK.
Last month, Moffat explained to Marketing Week that her enhanced role was formed out of a desire to unify all aspects of the customer experience and make communications clearer.
She claimed HSBC is putting “marketing in context”, particularly in the UK as the team is “probably three to four times bigger” than it was in 2021 “because of the wider remit”. Moffat also described HSBC as trying to “connect marketing” right the way through the organisation, rather than it being a “separate team”.
