Lloyds Bank decided, post London 2012, to upweight the community focus of its partnerships and engaged Redmandarin to develop proposals. These partnerships had clear criteria : there needed to be a clear role for the bank; any partnership needed to have awareness across England and Wales; and needed also to offer touchpoints with communities at a branch level.
The exercise was challenging but stimulating. It required viewing the partnership landscape with fresh eyes, to identify fresh potential. Inevitably, the exercise was labour intensive: even where we could identify opportunity, we needed to engage with the partner in some depth to iron out operational issues and confirm feasibility.
The National Lottery was one such example. The Lottery were looking for brand partners to support their work and in particular, the launch and management of a new community fund. This fund would offer funding to communities to take communal ownership of local assets, following the introduction of the ‘Community right to bid’ enshrined in the 2011 Localism Act. Lloyds Bank would have the responsibility to promote the fund to communities and the opportunity to advise them on the business planning and funding required – a win/win. Unfortunately, Lloyds was ultimately unable to proceed because the National Lottery could not launch in England and Wales at the same time, an operational no-go for Lloyds.
Ultimately, Children in Need emerged as a suitable partner. Although largely an annual event with a short window, BBC Children in Need enjoys extremely high awareness and favourability – with Pudsey enjoying over 98% approval ratings.
The partnership would extend and build on the relationships with schools that the Bank developed during London 2012. The partnership was highly popular with employees, and allowed the Bank to make its traditional ‘Charity of the Year’ activity public-facing.
Lloyds became a primary partner of BBC Children in Need and its deepest commercial partner. Although the BBC allowed some recognition during the broadcast, the major benefit was to offer the Bank the opportunity to continue to demonstrate its commitment to local communities.
