Challenge

Santander sought a partner to deliver a PR and Public Affairs campaign running alongside a consumer campaign to promote their international trade service ‘Santander Navigator’. This is a service offered by Santander to help clients overcome barriers to trade, such as local customs, laws and bureaucracy. Santander leverage their global network for their SME clients in the UK. The aim was to create a positive platform for Santander to demonstrate their work to facilitate growth among UK SMEs.

Strategy

We developed a messaging framework that defined the key narrative that Santander wished to deliver to media and policy audiences. We built a research platform – based on a regionally representative survey of 1,000 SMEs in the UK and in-depth interviews with Santander business clients – that allowed us to create robust data points through which to tell that narrative. Key data points included 1) a pounds and pence figure for the value of ‘untapped potential’ in the UK economy 2) a forecast of the number of new jobs that could be created in the UK economy and 3) estimates were produced at a national and regional level.​

Outcome

Leveraging content our team creates – including a flagship published report, case studies, press releases and video content – the campaign secures extensive coverage through key media outlets, including This is Money, the Daily Telegraph, the Times, The Irish Times, CityAM, the New Statesman and the Yorkshire Post. ​

We also drafted two approaches for parliamentary stakeholders – one to Government Ministers and Shadow Ministers in advance of the research being published and another on the day of publication to a wider audience – in total the campaign and successfully engaged 130 stakeholders. This was supported by a parliamentary event we organised, sharing the report’s findings and hosted by Anthony Mangnall MP.