Farmers are good, if reluctant, customers. When signed up they are high value and generally long term. The communication goals were therefore quite simple: to raise Barclays' overall profile in the farming industry and more specifically to generate actual leads that could be converted into new clients. What was difficult was overcoming the deep-seated resistance of our target audience to bank advertising.

This idea owed everything to the research that the media team undertook. Barclays' objective was to raise their profile in the farming industry. To help them do this the Starcom team could have based all its recommendations on the standard research. It decided instead to interview ten Relationship Managers at Barclays' who look after farmers. What the team learned from these managers changed its entire thinking.

Farmers are hard to advertise to, especially on the subject of banks. They don't like advertising and they don't trust banks! Convention would dictate using a full-page ad in Farmer's Weekly, however it was clear traditional advertising wouldn't work. With their knowledge the team looked for another way to communicate Barclays' message. They identified the industry's leading trade show, the Royal Smithfield, held annually in London. The only problem was that besides banks and advertising, the other thing farmers dislike is trying to navigate around London. Our idea was able to overturn all three of these negatives.