Westpac Grad - For Uncommon Minds

An uncommon evolution

You might think you know Westpac’s Uncommon Minds campaign, but you haven’t seen anything yet!

Westpac’s famous grad heads - exploding with uncommon experiences, interests and skills - still feature. But this year, animated selfies reveal the moments that created those uncommon minds, and on TikTok and Facebook Reels our grads explain what’s inside them.

Real grads with real stories help us attract independent thinkers from every field of study. We know it works, because we ask our grads what inspired them to apply:

Samantha – “To me, Westpac’s ‘Uncommon Minds’ brand is an encouragement to bring fresh perspectives and a new toolbox to the company.”

Tanisha – “Its focus on celebrating individuality and diverse thinking strongly resonated with me and influenced my decision to join Westpac.”

These are the grads we want, so it makes sense to create more of the stories that inspire them. The campaign only concluded in August, yet applications are already up more than a quarter, and the mix has shifted: STEM candidates now make up 53.6% of our applicant pool, and female representation is up by 3.6%. More uncommon minds, from more places.

We set three objectives for the 2026 campaign:

Grow applications on the prior year by expanding Uncommon Minds into a wider integrated campaign, with deeper storytelling and broader reach.

Attract independent thinkers from every field of study, shifting the applicant mix beyond the commerce-focused pool banking traditionally draws on, and continuing to grow female representation.

Reach more students more efficiently: greater reach and impressions without matching increases in media investment.

An uncommonly integrated strategy

The strategy answered one challenge: how do you improve an already high-performing graduate proposition without losing the idea that made it successful? Rather than replace ‘Uncommon Minds’, we dug deeper into the experiences and skills that create one.

We built a hierarchy of messaging that followed students through their day, each platform adding a little more to pique curiosity.

Each message was grounded in real Westpac graduates’ hopes, experiences and ambitions. Our three hero graduates spanned AI, data and finance, so a student in a technical degree could see themselves in the program as readily as a commerce student. We shared the reels through our platform media partners, @SeekGrad and @Prosple, putting those stories in front of students already searching, and amplified them through partner EDMs.

The same idea ran through campus and commuter outdoor, animated study panels, LinkedIn video and single-image creative, TikTok and Facebook Reels, and our own Graduate Program site: each channel adding a layer, each reinforcing one proposition, an uncommon mind is an asset here, not something to hide.

It was built with Westpac’s graduate recruitment and employer-brand stakeholders, media and creative partners, and university media owners. Current graduates were not simply talent: they made the story credible and extended its reach through their own networks.

Uncommon experiences

Our campaign has always shared grads’ stories through video, posters and outdoor media.

This year we evolved the concept by capturing the moments that created each of our three hero grads’ Uncommon Minds. The exploding-heads posters and short-form videos still ran, but we added longer-form video in which we animated our grads’ own selfies to show how they acquired those experiences.

Then we gave our grads a voice. Through TikTok and Facebook Reels, our heroes walked us through their uncommon minds, sharing the stories that made them compelling candidates.

Why has this AI grad got an emu in his uncommon mind? Josh can now tell you his family has four pet emus. Why has this Data grad got a DJ deck? DJing is Valerie’s side hustle. Why would a Finance and Treasury grad have ballet shoes? Jess’s ballet lessons help her wind down after a day in the markets.

Uncommon delivery

The delivery followed students through their day. On the journey to university: ‘Uncommon Minds’ posters at train stations, bus shelters and on the streets. On campus: the same posters animating into 8-second videos in bars and food courts. Scrolling social: longer selfie-led videos showing where those experiences came from. Then TikTok and Facebook Reels introduced the grads themselves.

In total we created 129 assets across 23 integrated asset groups, including video, outdoor video, university media, live events and internal videos.