Barclaycard highlights 'convenience' message

by Alex Brownsell, Marketing 21-Oct-08, 08:30

LONDON - Barclaycard has unveiled a strategy that focuses on the convenience of contactless payment, replacing its long-standing campaigns in which celebrities used the card to evade sticky situations.

The ads, created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, will be first shown during ITV talent show The X-Factor on 25 October.

The 30-, 60- and 90-second ads, which will also be screened in cinemas, show an office worker taking off his clothes and getting into a waterslide, which he rides on his commute home. During his journey, the commuter, played by Gavin and Stacey actor Robert Wilfort, uses a Barclaycard to swipe his way through subway system gates and buy groceries.

The ad, featuring the 1976 single Let Your Love Flow by the Bellamy Brothers, ends without a strapline and refers viewers to the website, Barclaycard.co.uk.

Barclaycard chief marketing officer Gary Twelvetree said the 'Waterslides' creative would be the first in a series of lighthearted ads depicting the convenience of the contactless technology. A variety of actors will star in the spots.

The campaign, which is understood to have cost £5m, is the first since Barclaycard introduced its revamped visual identity last month in a bid for greater international appeal. As part of the overhaul, the credit-card company is phasing out its Barclaycard Business sub-brand.

Over the past 20 years, comic actors such as Rowan Atkinson, Angus Deayton, Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Saunders have appeared in Barclaycard's TV and cinema ads. Its most recent campaign, the latest instalment of which was first aired in June, featured Stephen Mangan and Julian Rhind-Tutt, who star in Channel 4 comedy Green Wing.

Barclaycard said its contactless-enabled cards, which it introduced in September 2007, are used by 1m people in the UK, a figure that includes all its Platinum cardholders.

The brand, which has nearly 12m customers in the UK, has also trialled contactless payments by mobile phone in partnership with O2.