A demonstration of

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• > Paid
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Playing the Market

An interactive online investment game changed perceptions of Barclays Bank and attracted thousands of new customers.

The challenge

In France, Barclays is perceived as an exclusive bank for wealthy people, making it difficult to attract new retail customers. Our task was to modernize the bank's image, reinforce its reputation for financial expertise, and recruit 5,000 new clients within a year

Our insight

Few people consider changing their bank. 20-30 year-olds are too busy earning and spending to worry about banking. The over-45s are unwilling to change the banking habit of a lifetime. So we focused on affluent technology-friendly 30-45 year-olds. We had to persuade ‘the switchers' that Barclays could offer them outstanding financial performance, advice and emotional engagement

Our solution

We devised The Barclays Family, the world's first interactive online investment game. Players are invited to take the part of one of the four children of ‘Lord Barclays', and convert a €10,000 stake into as much money as possible by playing the financial markets. The player who makes the most money becomes Lord Barclays' heir as the boss of the bank. Yahoo! hosted a players' forum, and ran dedicated advertising and editorial content. The campaign has been so popular that we have evolved it to launch other Barclays savings products and feature in point-of-sale material

The results

• 6,600 new clients
• 16,000 regular players on The Barclays Family microsite
• 30% increase in activity on Barclays' corporate site
• Cannes Cyber Lion, Méribel and Stratégies Grand Prix winner