Brian Crooks

Citibank Chairman

2006

The Brief

Create an elegant packaging system for Citi’s high net worth credit card program, Chairman.

The Solution

It may be assumed that a bank trying to sell its high net worth clients on a credit card would pull out all the stops. That, however, was not the case. We had a limited budget and a tight time line to conceptualize, design, source and produce the Citi Chairman credit card packaging. Citi had already conducted some research with the target market and one insight in particular helped guide our design: The customer did not open their own mail, their assistants did. So instead of trying to impress the customer with a gift they would never use, I kept the assistant in mind. I wanted the package to have an understated presence that communicated the benefits and program clearly and efficiently. It also needed to be functional in some way. The final design consisted of a beautiful leather portfolio that could be used by the assistant to keep all the information about the card organized and at the ready.

Completed at Pentagram.