Central Pacific Bank: Banking on Belonging

How do you modernize a beloved institution without erasing the soul that made people love it in the first place? CPB faced a dual pressure: mainland-owned competitors were arriving with tech-forward experiences and national resources, while younger Hawaii residents expected the same digital convenience from local banks that they got from national ones. A rebrand that leaned only modern would sacrifice heritage. A rebrand that leaned only heritage would sacrifice relevance. The answer had to hold both.

CPB's real competitive advantage was never its products — it was its provenance. No mainland bank can be founded by people who fought for Hawaii. That origin is the brand. The reframe was this: CPB doesn't serve a community. It is the community — built by it, for it, from it. In a banking landscape full of scale and efficiency, CPB's differentiator was humanity with history.

We led a full brand identity project — from strategic foundation to visual rollout. The positioning framed CPB not as a Hawaiian bank, but as the bank of Hawaii's people: built to serve everyone the establishment overlooked, as relevant today as it was in 1954.

• Brand Strategy: We anchored the brand around CPB's irreplicable founding story — the "Go for Broke" spirit translated from the battlefield into banking.
• Visual Identity: The new identity drew directly from CPB's roots in mid-century Hawaii — warm, optimistic, human. A bespoke illustration system was built around Hawaii's ocean, flora, and fauna.
• Brand Architecture and Messaging: We developed a messaging platform connecting CPB's historical mission — access and inclusion — to its present-day role in Hawaii's economy.
• Flagship HQ Experience: The rebrand extended to CPB's flagship headquarters in downtown Honolulu.
• Internal Launch: We developed rollout materials to bring CPB's 850+ employees inside the story.

• Full brand rebrand launched in 2020 across all customer touchpoints — visual identity, messaging, digital, branch environment.
• Brand positioned CPB as the community-native alternative in a market increasingly dominated by mainland competitors.
• New identity gave CPB's digital transformation a modern, credible brand foundation.
• CPB went on to post record earnings in 2021, ending the year with approximately $7.4 billion in assets and 30 branches across Hawaii.
• Brand heritage strengthened community trust during COVID-19 response: CPB originated more PPP loans than any other lender in Hawaii — 36.5% of all state PPP loans, more than all other major Hawaii banks combined.