Stitchy Taps Bullion to Creates an ‘Inactive Bank’ for Hargreaves Lansdown

Stitchy’s creative idea uses the Active Savings product name to define its opposite: inactive banks. By giving banking complacency a name, ‘Don’t Tolerate Inactive Banks’ reframes established banks as institutions that benefit when customers leave their savings unquestioned, while positioning Hargreaves Lansdown Active Savings as the alternative.

Directed by Ben Green at Bullion, the drily humorous 30-second film takes viewers inside an ‘inactive bank’, populated by yawning staff, unanswered phones and employees finding increasingly inventive ways to pass the time.

Creator Rob Madin, best known for his comedy alter-ego Brett Domino, stars as a banker presenting a poor savings rate as though it were a generous reward for years of loyalty. His misplaced confidence, set against the lethargy of the bank around him, exposes the gap between the reassuring language of banking and what customers may actually be getting in return.

Stitchy also brought in BAFTA-nominated writer, director, actor and comedian David Schneider as comedy craft consultant, helping sharpen the ad’s characterisation, timing and physical comedy. The humour comes at the expense of the banks rather than their customers, creating a comic world in which the entertainment carries the argument: the more inactive the bank appears, the more viewers are invited to question what their loyalty is earning them.

The film reflects Stitchy’s post-social approach to creativity, taking what social has taught brands about earning attention through recognisable behaviour, distinctive characters and moments people actually want to watch, and applying that thinking to TV.
Rather than treating TV and social as separate creative worlds, the campaign is designed to travel between channels. Madin’s creator sensibility is brought into the TV performance, while shorter social films extend the bankers’ time-wasting behaviour into individual comic scenarios. OOH and print distil the idea into pointed challenges to banking loyalty and complacency, while creator activity brings the issue closer to people’s own savings habits.

Andy Cridland, Head of Brand & Content at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Active Savings gives people a different way to think about where they keep their cash, but many savers simply stick with the bank they know. We wanted this campaign to challenge that inertia and give people a reason to question what their loyalty is actually earning them. ‘Don’t Tolerate Inactive Banks’ does that in a distinctive and entertaining way, while making Active Savings a clear alternative.”

Graeme Douglas-Kilgannon, CEO of Stitchy, added: “People can be incredibly loyal to banks they’ve been with for years, often without stopping to question what that loyalty is actually earning them.

“The name Active Savings gave us a natural creative starting point. If Hargreaves Lansdown is active, what does that make the banks relying on customers doing nothing? From there we could build an entire comic world around the idea of the ‘inactive bank’.

“This work is exactly what we mean by post-social creativity. Social has changed the rules of attention far beyond the social feed. We’ve taken the character, comic timing and creator sensibility that make something worth watching and built them into a big TV idea, then designed that idea to travel naturally across every other part of the campaign.”

Founded in late 2024 by Ange Douglas-Kilgannon, Stitchy is an independent, female-founded and owned creative agency based in London, with social and marketing science at the core of its work. Its multidisciplinary team brings together classically trained creatives and brand strategists with deep expertise across platforms, publishing and social, starting with the problem rather than a predetermined channel to find the most effective creative answer.

Media planning and buying is by Hearts United.