Barclays: #FarmtheFuture

Barclays Business Banking charged Brands2life with raising awareness of its long standing support of the agriculture sector. We needed to devise a campaign that would show Barclays’ understanding of the challenges faced by the farming community, and position the bank and it’s network of relationship managers as trusted advisors, on hand to help agricultural businesses diversify and grow. Wider issues including Brexit and climate change were to be avoided, narrowing our remit.

Mining Barclays own data, we noticed a key trend emerging. Four in 10 farmers were pension age or over, with a lack of younger farmers entering the market. To raise awareness of this issue and encourage farmer to consider succession planning, we launched the #FarmtheFuture initiative. Promoting the benefits of a career in agriculture, the campaign aimed to get more young people interested in the sector and demonstrate how it could make for a fun and rewarding career path. We partnered with former JLS boyband member and now successful turkey farmer, JB Gill, to  create an engaging video campaign to promote the issue.

The campaign generated 50 pieces of coverage in total, with a total reach of 389m. The coverage included stand out pieces on Radio 4’s flagship farming programme, Farming Today, a dedicated piece on BBC South East, and a feature on BBC R5LIVE.