Don’t bank on it: Is this UBS promo the most cringeworthy video ever?
Social media was left baffled today after a recruitment video for UBS surfaced online.
Anyone who’s ever stepped foot in the business world has, at some point, been subjected to a promotional video.
From forced smiles to inane platitudes, the corporate promo shoot is invariably a cringeworthy affair, usually witnessed under duress during some ghastly induction day.
Always keen to outdo its rivals, though, UBS has a credible bid for what might be the most painful piece of marketing ever created.
A new video circulated by UBS Careers promises to show “a day in the life of an investment banker”.
For 90 painful seconds we watch Natalie, a perma-grinning investment banker, as she skips through her day in the Big Smoke.
“The days are exciting and the time goes by so fast,” she says, with all the credibility of a forced confession.
The video, helpfully time-stamped to demonstrate the reasonable working hours, takes our gleeful hero through pitches and meetings, before ending with a virtual after-work dinner. “Just a normal day… and it’s not over yet,” she says, doing her best impression of Hide the Pain Harold.
Natalie even has time for a mindfulness session in the middle of the day — a real turn-up for the books in a bank whose motto used to be “we will not rest”.
Full marks go to the scriptwriters, however, who make the investment banker sound like she’s struggling through a GCSE French oral.
“There was some interesting movement today,” she says vaguely. “Bull or bear, that’s the question”, she adds, though of course, it really isn’t. Forget Industry. Move over Lupin. This is gripping stuff.
Watch the video in full: