Barclays: Let’s Talk Business

Barclays committed £250 million to farmers looking to invest in sustainability measures, especially agri-tech, that would improve the industry’s carbon footprint and plan for a more sustainable future. The aim was to raise awareness of the funding and to drive farmers towards Barclays. The approach needed to be integrated, securing national coverage and generating assets that could be used by relationship managers seeking to engage clients in becoming carbon neutral.

Alongside research-based press releases, we identified podcasts as an effective medium for getting our message heard, which became a three-part mini-series around sustainability in agriculture.

The first guest was celebrated rugby union referee Nigel Owens, a cattle farmer away from his sporting day job, who became the face of the campaign. Neil Parish MP was chosen as the second guest, to discuss policy and regulation in the sector, and a farming couple from Northern Ireland appeared on the final episode, talking about how they use technology on their farm.

The podcast hosts were Barclays’ National Head of Agriculture Mark Suthern and one of the bank’s agriculture relationship managers, Ffion Parry. Both are highly knowledgeable within agriculture and it allowed the Barclays presence to be constant without having to oversell any messaging.

The three podcasts had distinct identities and themes, complementing each other nicely and offering a varied and detailed overview of the farming sector from various perspectives. They have already been used by relationship managers and widely shared on social media.