Smoke and mirrors: New ad banks on mistrust of financial institutions

San Francisco – Wall Street is a flimsy set and bankers are mannequins in a new advertisement for Barclays that makes the bold move of acknowledging consumer suspicion of financial institutions.

In ‘Fake’, the tv ad by Venables Bell & Partners, viewers follow a man as he wanders around the iconic downtown New York district familiar for its yellow cabs and suited professionals – except that traffic has come to a standstill, and the men and women in the street are plastic dummies frozen in mid-step. As the narrator describes the ‘strange financial times’ we are living in, the man comes across more illusory scenes – a hollow pile of newspapers, concrete-seeming steps that turn out to be made of paper – that establish his world to be no more real than a Hollywood sound stage. His eventual encounter with reality at Barclays establishes the bank as a solid, trustworthy place compared to the deceptive world around it.

By acknowledging the public’s current anger and disillusionment towards banks, Barclays effectively puts itself forward as a brand sympathetic to the mood of its customers.