Barclays launches Tube brand positioning campaign

Barclays is blanket-covering Canary Wharf Tube station and shopping centre in its first advertising campaign promoting its new brand positioning, “Inventive Spirit”.

The high street bank has booked all advertising space at the station for three months. The campaign, created by branding company Interbrand, is aimed at boosting staff morale at Barclays’ Canary Wharf headquarters and “annoying” its competitors. The activity includes six 20ft-high posters, 48-sheets, ticket barrier advertising and a “Welcome to Barclays Central” ad above the entrance to the station.

A Barclays spokesman says the new work is “warm, witty and confident” and features straplines such as “Barclays people are better dancers (because we think on our feet and don’t miss a beat)” and “Barclays people smell nicer (because great ideas come to us in the shower)”.

The campaign follows the appointment of former ITV marketing director Jim Hytner as Barclays group marketing director a year ago. It marks his first external brand – as opposed to product – advertising for the bank.

He scrapped the long-running “Fluent in Finance” campaign, and set about re-energising the bank’s image from the “inside out”, deciding on the new positioning after consulting staff, as revealed in Marketing Week (MW 11 May).

It will be followed next month by a national multi-million pound consumer brand campaign encompassing television, outdoor, online and press, created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

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