Halifax Bank became a part of Lloyds Banking Group in 2008, when Lloyds acquired HBOS. Within Lloyds Banking Group’s house of banking brands, Halifax was regarded as the most value-driven, although customer demographics were very similar to Lloyds and Bank of Scotland. Thanks to its heritage as a mutual society, Halifax is most closely associated with the products of savings and mortgages. With roots in the north of England, penetration in the south was also an objective – as was the need to support bank staff engaging more fully with their local community. Coming out from behind the counter, as it was expressed internally. As LBG decided to pursue Community Partnership as a model for sponsorship, Redmandarin was briefed to scope opportunities for Halifax.
With traditional sponsorship excluded from the search, we considered a wide range of not for profit partnerships and public institutions, where community value was an intrinsic. As mass reach was still key, we explored in depth NGOs with high brand awareness but also centralised enough to deliver a single campaign across the UK. We presented a wide range of opportunities to Halifax, but The Big Lunch met their needs perfectly.
Run by The Eden Project, the premise of The Big Lunch is to build community by encouraging communities to host communal lunches. Simple but effective : impact studies demonstrated reduced alienation, reduced loneliness, greater sense of community and a greater commitment to community-building by participants. The results were so impressive that The Big Lunch was also about to embark on a programme to create community change-makers, supporting local people with training and resource to act as catalysts for community action.
The Big Lunch was enormously popular with Halifax staff. It offered them the opportunity to support their local community at a level which was sustainable – ranging from organising high street lunches to supporting local organisers with free resources. For some Halifax members, it was transformative : ‘I’ve worked for Halifax for over 30 years and I have never been so proud.’ It brought the staff into the community, it focused squarely on neighbourhoods and housing, aligned with their leading position as a mortgage provider, it had national reach as a brand and was supremely adaptable.
It also connected with the activist zeitgeist, enabling community organisers to play a larger role in their communities – if they wanted – through the Change-maker programme. The partnership had a highly positive impact on brand metrics and equally so with employee engagement, a very active consideration as Halifax was still integrating within Lloyds Banking Group.
