Barclays marketers warned they must adhere to new brand 'values'

Last week, chief executive Antony Jenkins set out the bank’s long-awaited strategic review, which included a commitment to discontinue any activity that has a negative impact on Barclays’ wider reputation.

Employees across the bank must conform to Barclays’ corporate purpose of ‘Helping people achieve their ambitions – in the right way’. Performance will also be judged against measures such as ‘respect, integrity, service, excellence and stewardship’.

In an internal memo last month, Jenkins issued a warning to any employees who cannot ‘fully buy in’ to the new strategy, stating: ‘Barclays is not the place for you. The rules have changed. You won’t feel comfortable at Barclays and, to be frank, we won’t feel comfortable with you as colleagues.’

Speaking exclusively to Marketing, Barclays’ head of brand, reputation and citizenship, David Wheldon, confirmed that marketers working at the bank will be judged on the extent to which they adapt to the approach.

‘Antony Jenkins has previously [warned] about financial services focusing on the short term at the detriment of the long term, and marketing has done pretty much the same,’ said Wheldon.

‘[The new values] demand a different, much more collaborative way of working, while thinking about "we" rather than "me", and that is not always everyone’s cup of tea,’ he added.

‘It will be pretty difficult for people to fake these values, and we will find out quickly if people aren’t robust enough to deal with it.

‘We have got some great people, but great people who have had set ways of working, and those ways of working need to change.’

This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk