Banks spend big money to sponsor ADB’s annual meeting

Domestic commercial banks have been joining forces to organize the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) annual meeting, a big international event hosted by Vietnam, and taking full advantage of the event to do the marketing and polish their images.

Entering the National Convention Center in the My Dinh area in Hanoi, where official events of the 44^th ADB’s annual meeting took place, one can easily see the striking images of the Vietnam Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (Vietinbank). Not only having a banderole hung outside the center, the bank also had a stall where it provided foreign currency exchange services, a stall at the exhibition area on the second floor, and installed some ATM and POS to serve the cash withdrawal.

In the document bags delivered to the annual meeting’s participants, there is a notebook with the images of Vietinbank and a USB with the bank’s logo. Especially, the name of the bank was used to call the meeting room (Vietinbank Room), where the most important event of the ADB’s meeting – the Governors session – where Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung attended on May 5. These are the remarkable benefits reserved for the Diamond Sponsor.

Other state owned banks including the Vietnam Bank for Foreign Trade (Vietcombank), and the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) appeared at the event as the gold sponsors, who had the right to hang their banderoles at some specific roads or on chosen places.

Meanwhile, silver sponsors appeared with their logos printed on the publications used at the conferences or at the reception desks. Some of them also had ATMs at the conferences to serve delegates.

A gold sponsor told VnExpress that the bank decided to act as a sponsor for the big event, because it sees this as a social and political responsibility rather than an opportunity to advertise itself. Therefore, the bank only hung banderoles on some roads near the places where international delegates stayed, while it did not provide services to popularize its images inside the national convention center.

“If we need to launch advertisement campaigns, it would be better for us to hang banderoles on streets, which would help attract the attention from many people,” a media executive of a bank said. “The annual meeting mostly gathers big finance institutions. Meanwhile, we need to access these clients through other channels”.

Le Duc Tho, Deputy General Director of Vietinbank said this was for the first time the annual meeting of ADB took place in Vietnam, therefore, the bank really wanted to make its contribution to the success of the special event. That explained why Vietinbank decided to appear at the event as the diamond sponsor.

“In the current circumstances, where there are big difficulties for the global economy, the successful organizing of an event would bring big business opportunities,” Tho said.

According to VnExpress, it was not easy to seek sponsors for the 44^th annual ADB’s meeting in the context of economic difficulties. Earlier this year, the State Bank of Vietnam set up a council in charge of campaigning for the event sponsoring, which was chaired by Governor of the State Bank Nguyen Van Giau personally.

According to VnExpress, the diamond sponsor contributed 10 billion dong to the event, while each of gold sponsors, 5 billion dong and silver 1.2 billion dong.

Viettel, the military telecom company was a special case at the event. Some sources said that Viettel appeared at the meeting with the support of its partner – Vietinbank, the diamond sponsor. Several days before the ADB’s meeting’s opening, Viettel and Vietinbank signed a comprehensive cooperation contract. At the signing ceremony, Vietinbank’s Chair, Pham Huy Hung asked Viettel’s General Director, Hoang Anh Xuan to join forces to sponsor the ADB’s meeting.

“We received an attractive invitation, which allowed us to be present at such a big event and we decided to join the event,” the representative from Viettel said.

He also said that the sum of money Viettel spent was the lowest if compared with other banks, but he declined to provide detailed information.- VnExpress

Tags: ADB, ADB Annual Meeting