How an Orange Bowler Hat Beat the Big Banks

Budget doesn't win. Specificity does.

Late 2023, Allica Bank faced every challenger's nightmare: legacy banks with decades of trust, neo-banks with £50M ad budgets, and them, operating on loose change.

They turned an orange bowler hat into the most distinctive brand asset in SME banking.

Here's how they did it.

The Problem: Trust Without the Budget

Allica serves a tiny segment. Established SMEs with 5-250 employees.

Not start-ups. Not enterprises. The messy middle nobody else wanted.

Too small for big banks to care. Too established for neo-banks to understand.

And the business owners in this segment? Jaded. Sceptical. Tired of empty promises from banks that didn't pick up the phone.

Allica couldn't out-spend the competition.

So they had to out-think them.

The Creative Solution: "Get Your Money Hat On"

Rooster Punk (the agency) took Allica's orange logo graphic and flipped it into a bowler hat.

Simple. Distinctive. Memorable.

The creative platform: business owners wear many hats. The orange bowler is their "money hat."

Traditional relationship banking (hello, actual humans who answer calls) meets modern tech-first service.

The campaign featured quirky characters in different hats: chef's hat, hard hat, whatever, across TV, OOH, press, digital, social.

Every. Single. Touchpoint. Reinforced. The. Orange. Hat.

You couldn't miss it.

The Results: Outsized ROI From Modest Spend

60 million impressions within a target audience of just 60,000 SMEs.

Read that again.

Brand awareness increased 14x. Doubled savings account openings.

61% surge in small business interest.

Named UK's fastest-growing fintech by Deloitte.

From a campaign most agencies would've called "too niche."

Why It Worked: Niching Hard, Humanising Harder

Mistake: Going broad

Most banks aim for everyone.

"We serve SMEs." Cool. So does everyone.

Generic attracts no one.

Fix: Go hyper-specific

Allica went all-in on established SMEs with 5-250 employees. No one else.

Not start-ups. Not enterprises. Just that one segment.

And they didn't lead with product features.

They led with emotion.

A visual metaphor that instantly communicated differentiation: old-school service, modern tech, wrapped in an orange hat you couldn't forget.

The brand asset became their identity

The orange bowler hat wasn't just creative flair.

Customers loved it so much that Allica adopted it into its logo in 2025.

They created a brand asset so distinctive it became cultural shorthand.

Customers now call them "the orange hat bank."

That's what happens when you niche hard and humanise harder.

The Rebel Lesson: Narrow Wins

While competitors chased broad audiences with generic "we care about SMEs" messaging, Allica carved out a segment so specific that nobody else could compete.

They created something customers loved enough to make it their identity.

Rooster Punk proved emotion moves B2B markets. That storytelling isn't fluff, it's firepower.

Most agencies won't niche this hard.

Most brands won't commit to a creative platform this bold.

That's exactly why it worked.

If you're competing against bigger budgets, ask yourself: are you niching hard enough?