Barclays Bank: How (Not) to Communicate with Stakeholders

Alberto Pallecchi

Answers for Case Study 1.1

Barclays Bank: How (not) to communicate with stakeholders

• Discuss each image crisis for Barclays?

• What was the exact cause or event that led to each of these crises?

• What could Barclays have done to avoid these crises, or to anticipate the potential fallout?

The Barclays Bank case gives us some examples of image crises, which are linked to a fail in the corporate communication process.

The event that led the Uk-based bank and financial service group to experience serious troubles was the decision to spearhead an aggressive advertising campaign in 2000, that featured the slogan “A big world needs a big bank”. At a first sight, this campaign looks like a normal and successful idea to underline the power and ambitions of a strong brand such as Barclays, but its diffusion coincided with some wrong management decisions, which transformed this message – that had received a good pre-publicity – in a communication disaster.

Barclays decided to close about 170 branches in the UK, many in rural areas, while it was spreading the message of the “Big Bank”. Moreover, one of these adverts featured the world famous and Welsh-born actor Anthony Hopkins and, for coincidence, the village where he was born was one of the victims of the branch closures. The adverts provoked a strong national debate in the UK, calling the attention of the national and local governments, most of those accusing Barclays for the closures. The situation worsened when it was revealed that the new Chief Executive, Matthew Barret, had been paid £1.3 million for just three months’ work. The media waited three years to let Barret paid the price of this, when he admitted that he did not borrow on credit cards because they were too expensive, and that he has suggested his four children to do the same. The press jumped on the comment, creating another image crisis, especially because the general public had never forgives the Barclays CEO for his...