wells fargo
Showrooming
Turning 4,000-plus branches into an environmental media network
Retail Strategy
CUSTOMER JOURNEY
physical DESIGN
CONTENT DESIGN
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Over a multi-year engagement, we transformed Wells Fargo's national branch network from a passive transaction environment into a strategically managed environmental media channel. The work began with a comprehensive assessment — stakeholder interviews, branch audits, customer journey mapping — and culminated in a modular content and design system deployed across 4,000-plus locations. The program integrated digital and physical media into a unified communication architecture, brought Wells Fargo's affluent Premier brand into the branch experience, and established the infrastructure for the bank's ongoing branch media operations.
Treating the branch as a media channel
Most banks approach branch design as an architecture and identity problem — how the space looks, how it flows, how it signals the brand. But the branch is also a media environment: a channel with a captive audience, natural dwell time, and a direct path to action that no other marketing channel can match. A customer who sees something in a branch can ask a banker about it immediately.
Wells Fargo understood the opportunity. What the bank needed was a system — a strategic framework for what to communicate, where to communicate it, how to sequence messages across the customer journey, and how to sustain that communication at the scale of a national network.
Strategy first
We began with an immersive assessment: interviews with executives, branch managers, product specialists, and frontline bankers across every segment Wells Fargo served. We mapped the customer journey inside the branch the way a media planner maps a campaign — identifying where attention was available, where it was lost, and where communication could genuinely influence behavior. What emerged was a content architecture that matched communication objectives to physical locations and customer states.
Waiting areas became discovery zones, surfacing the range of what Wells Fargo could offer. Digital Engagement Points and Media Walls were positioned to spark curiosity about specific services at the moment of attention. Content near banker interaction areas was designed to prime the conversation before it began.
The messaging worked at two levels. The functional dimension built product awareness. The emotional dimension connected those offerings to what customers actually cared about — buying a home, funding an education, building a business. The customer was the hero of these stories. Wells Fargo was the partner helping them get there.
A system built to travel
Carrying the strategy across thousands of locations — each different in size, layout, and customer profile — meant turning concepts into a system that could actually be built, installed, and maintained at scale. That work happened in close partnership with a deep bench of vendors and specialists. We worked alongside fabricators, signage manufacturers, digital display specialists, and installation teams to engineer, prototype, and pilot the system — bringing their expertise together with our design concepts and Wells Fargo's needs.
It was a genuine partnership with a lot of talented participants. Once the concept and design were set, our role shifted to coordination: keeping the many contributors aligned, advocating for the client's interests throughout, and being a good partner to everyone at the table. Installation ran on a two-to-three day cycle per branch, with the partner network coordinating across geographies and branch formats against the same specifications and quality standards throughout.
One system, room to flex
The system was built to adapt. Within a single national framework, it could shift to meet the needs of different branches and the customers they served — most notably by bringing Wells Fargo's affluent Premier brand into the branch experience, with elevated positioning and content tailored to wealth management relationships. The same architecture extended to community-focused programs such as Hope Inside, where branches served a distinct purpose and audience. Same strategic foundation, expressed in the register each context called for.
The foundation for everything that followed
The Showrooming program gave Wells Fargo something it had never had: a coherent voice inside its branches, a content architecture, and a production infrastructure capable of sustaining both nationwide. It also established the foundation for the work that followed — the Here to Help You Get There campaign platform, ongoing quarterly content production across 4,000+ branches, and the signage program for Wells Fargo's headquarters at Hudson Yards.
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