Corporate Communication

Case study: Barclays Bank (UK)

Early in 2003, Barclays, a UK-based financial services group engaged primarily in retail banking, investment banking and investment management, appointed a new advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH). BBH was hired to spearhead a ‘more humane’ campaign, after the bank was lambasted for its ‘Big Bank’ adverts in 2002 that featured the slogan ‘a big world needs a big bank’. Barclays had spent £15 million (US$ 24.6 million)/ (21.5 million ¤) on its ‘Big Bank’ campaign, which featured celebrities such as Sir Anthony Hopkins and Tim Roth. The adverts were slick and had received good pre-publicity, but they turned into a communications disaster when they coincided with the news that Barclays was closing about 170 branches in the UK, many in rural areas. One of the earlier adverts featured Welsh-born Sir Anthony Hopkins talking from the comfort of a palatial home about the importance of chasing ‘big’ ideas and ambitions. The adverts provoked a national debate in the UK when junior minister Chris Mullin said that Barclays’ customers should revolt and ‘vote with their feet’. Barclays’ Marketing, Public Relations and Corporate Communications image crisis worsened when it was revealed that the new Chief Executive Matthew Barrett had been paid £1.3 million (US$ 2.1 million)/(1.8 million ¤) for just three months’ work. Competitor NatWest has since capitalized on the fall-out from the ‘Big Bank’ campaign. It has been running adverts that triumph the fact that it has abolished branch closures. Barclays has since extended opening hours at 84 per cent of its branches and recruited an extra 2,000 staff to service the extra hours. Together with the new adverts that will be ‘more humane and more tangible and based on actual products rather than the brand’, Barclay’s hopes that the stains from the ‘Big Bank’ campaign will finally start to wear off.

Questions for reflection

1. What was the exact cause or event that led to this communications...