Santander appointed FleishmanHillard UK to build an integrated communications and public affairs campaign to cement Santander’s place as a champion for UK First-time buyers.
Our insight revealed that while mainstream media discourse painted a positive picture for first-time buyers, beneath the headlines lay a very different story. The largely untold trend was that homeownership amongst young people was in fact falling, particularly amongst middle-income households, and Britain’s property-owning democracy, created in the 1920s, was in peril 100yrs after its birth.
We created “The Future of the Homeownership Dream”, a thought leadership campaign comprising the largest-ever study of prospective first-time buyers, which set out to examine the severity of this trend via a behavioural analysis and economic modelling, to not only forecast the impact on future wealth preservation and the health of the UK economy, but also to provide recommendations on ways in which the industry and government could work together to keep the homeownership dream alive for the masses.
The study disrupted the existing media narrative, and immediately placed Santander at the heart of the first-time buyers’ debate. At launch, we secured over 20 hits in national media and spokesperson appearances on Sky News, BBC Radio and Talksport. The report prompted substantial debate beyond media too, with both third-party experts and would-be homebuyers discussing the findings on Twitter, Mumsnet and Reddit, as well as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and HM Treasury both requesting briefings with Santander to discuss the data and listen to policy recommendations.
The campaign won the ‘Grand Prize for Campaign of the Year’ at ICCO Global Awards 2020. It was also crowned ‘Best Banking Communications Campaign’ at the PRCA City & Financial Awards 2020.
