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Cardboard or Plastic?
In the mid to late 1960s, the current account becomes
at last portable with the issue to customers of Martins Bank Bankers
Card. Remember, the number of CASH MACHINES in the UK is only just into
double figures, so if the holder of cheque card finds themselves in a town
without a branch of Martins, they are at least able to cash a cheque up to
the value of £30 (quite a useful sum at that time), at any of the participating
banks: Looking more like something you had carefully cut out from the back of
a breakfast cereal packet, these quaint yet perfectly functional cheque
guarantee cards are actually in use well into the early 1970s when they are
gradually replaced by the more familiar (clinical) plastic variety. As things have turned out, possibly every
plastic card ever made is still somewhere in the environment, whilst the
cardboard ones are long gone!
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BANKERS CARD
ISSUED BY:
Lloyds Bank Ltd
Martins Bank Limited
Williams Deacon’s Bank Ltd
Yorkshire Bank Ltd
Glyn Mills and Company
The National Bank Ltd
Lewis’s Bank Ltd
Bank of Scotland
Royal Bank of Scotland
National Commercial Bank of Scotland Ltd
Bank of Ireland
Hibernian Bank Ltd
The National Bank of Ireland Ltd
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Shame indeed, but thinking about it logically, why
did no-one think of making a plastic cheque card, at a time when plastic credit and charge cards were already in use in the UK?
 For Barclays, the smart move is into a
small piece of plastic – one which will outlast any cardboard counterpart,
and more importantly come to revolutionise the way we spend (or, more
accurately BORROW) our money for decades to come. The BARCLAYCARD is invented, and the idea
of a credit card that can also be used to guarantee cheques is born. Another crucial step is to ADVERTISE the
new concept of Barclaycard on TV – but how?
A gentleman’s agreement amongst all eleven English Clearing Banks means
that NO bank will Advertise alone on TV.
As we find out now from John Dalton, Former Barclaycard Advertising
Manager, the dithering over being the first bank to advertise on TV went on
into the 1970s, with Barclays believing they had succeeded in 1972. Then in
1989, a somewhat embarrassing discovery is made….
A
Gentleman’s Agreement?
 To say that “Barclaycard ‘A piece of Plastic’” was a TV commercial
isn’t strictly true and it obscures a
fascinating aspect of early bank television advertising history. That film
was used only in cinemas and at promotional events. Until the 1970s, all the English banks honoured an
agreement that none of them would advertise
on television; the only bank advertising being screened in those days was the
famous “Bank Manager in the
Cupboard” screened by the Committee of London Clearing Banks. In 1972 Barclays believed that another bank might break
the agreement. For a competitor to be able to say that they were first on
television was a prospect (that Barclays general managers couldn’t possibly
contemplate – (neither did they want to be the Villains’ who broke the
agreement). Barclaycard was the perfect
solution; we were given a hefty supplementary budget of £93,000 just to get on the air first. Les
Priestley and I supervised the production of two commercials during our lunch
break one day. They were made at ITN’s West End studios and the whole job was
done in less than 20 minutes; in later years I would go overseas with Alan
Whicker for a whole two weeks, spend three times as
much on production and come back with three
commercials! Serious planned television
advertising from Barclaycard didn’t begin until 1978 when we made jewellers Shop with Dudley Moore.
Having said all that, it was not until 1989 that we
discovered that the very first Barclaycard television commercial wasn’t by
Barclays at all. It was made in about 1967 by the British Linen Bank (who at
that time offered Barclaycard to their Scottish customers) and was shown only
North of the Border.
John’s comments were orignially written in a letter to
Barclays Connection Magazine in 2000 and are reproduced here by kind
permission of Barclays Connection Magazine.
Advertisement and
Barclaycard Name and Logo © Barclays and all other rights holders 1966 to
date.
Martins Bank is first
on TV in England!
The story above solves another
minor mystery in Martins Bank’s history – their 1968 TV advertisement for
Martins Unicorn is shown by three ITV companies – Granada, Yorkshire and
Southern. These areas have the largest
concentrations of Martins Bank Branches and customers. By perhaps taking
notice of the British Linen Bank’s lead for advertising in Scotland the
product of a Barclays SUBSIDIARY company,
Martins too is able to circumvent the special agreement, and in the process
it becomes the first bank to advertise on TV in England, AND without looking
like the villain of the piece! Our
search for a copy of the Martins ad continues, but you can see stills from
it, and read more about how it was made, by clicking HERE.
The long and winding
road to credit scoring…
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As preparations for the merger of Martins Bank and Barclays Bank gain
pace, Barclays spots an early opportunity to offer its still new Credit
Card facility to the customers of Martins Bank. Not EVERY customer of course, mostly just
those with a particularly high “net worth”.
This fairly innocent looking letter turns up on the doormats of the
fairly well to do, inviting them on an opt-OUT only basis to enjoy the use
of their very own BARCLAYCARD.
 It is
interesting to note, that since its arrival in 1966, the Barclaycard was
capable by 1969 of offering credit via 42,000 outlets – nothing close to
the many millions that are today shared amongst thousands of card issuers
around the World, but nevertheless hugely impressive for the time. In the late 1960s, religion and a very
“British” state of mind meant that many would shy away from the thought of
using credit, “never a borrower, nor a lender be” uppermost in their minds.
However,
the credit bug became irresistible, and, helped by a clarification of
customer rights in the 1974 Consumer Credit Act, we’ve been borrowing on
the “never never” ever since. It is
however a somewhat sad and sobering thought that in the 2020s we are
encouraged to build a CREDIT rating,
rather than to save for the things we need.
The
invention by Barclays of the DEBIT card in the early 1980s was greeted with suspicion by many, who
could not separate out in their minds the difference between a plastic
cheque and a credit card. Now, debit cards are indispensable, and along
with being able to pay by mobile phone, watches and other devices, the days
of cash itself are numbered, along with those of most Bank Branches. Credit
alone is no longer enough – you must also stay permanently wired into your
own “credit score”, otherwise, it would seem, you are not a very good
person at all…
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