New Co-operative Bank Campaign 'We won't stop' promotes recognition as the best ESG rated UK high street bank

New Co-operative Bank Campaign 'We won't stop' promotes recognition as the best ESG rated UK high street bank

Today, the UKs leading ethical bank launches its ‘We won’t stop’ print and social media campaign to announce it has been rated as the UK’s best Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) high street bank by Sustainalytics, a leading independent ESG and corporate governance research, ratings and analytics firm.

Print ads will feature in; The Guardian and The Times today, The Telegraph today – Wednesday 21 July and in The (i) Monday 19 - Friday 23 July, and in this weekend’s Observer (Sunday 25 July). It will then feature in The Guardian and The Times during next week (Monday 26 – Wednesday 28 July).

The Co-operative Bank has a long history of having social issue led marketing campaigns with recognisable creatives that have previously included images of oil barrels, bullets and even a full campaign dedicated to the issue of unexploded cluster bombs that played out a powerful message in cinemas across the UK almost 20 years ago.

With its roots in the co-operative movement and commitment to the values and ethics of that cause, The Co-operative Bank has a unique customer-led ethical policy shaped by more than 320,000 customer views that has guided the bank on which issues are most important to its customers. This not only influenced the advertising and marketing strategies of the Bank but also meant that the Bank has introduced polices on combating climate change and deforestation, and that are against the use of unnatural chemicals, indiscriminate weapons, and the extraction and production of fossil fuels.

Commenting on launch of the ‘We won’t stop’ campaign, Deb Darlington, Director of Brand and Marketing at The Co-operative Bank said:
“We have always been extremely focused on making the right environmental and social impacts and now that we have been recognised as the UK high street bank with the best ESG rating we knew it was time we once again put important social issues front and centre of our advertising and marketing.

“We know which issues are important to our customers and we want to continue to listen to their voice, enabling them to shape how we operate now and in the future. That’s why we’re also announcing with our latest campaign that we’re once again (for the 6th time in 30 years) offering all of our 3.3million customers the opportunity to have their say on what environmental and social issues we should prioritise.

“We have a long history of leading on environmental initiatives such as; being beyond carbon neutral and sending zero waste to landfill and, in recent years we’ve also campaigned to right social injustices in partnership with Amnesty International and we continue to work with domestic abuse charity Refuge to raise awareness of Economic Abuse in the UK. We now want to know if these issues are as important to our customers now or if there are more pressing concerns that we can also support and champion in the future.”

New research from The Co-operative Bank shows that having a strong ESG rating is not only a proud moment for the bank but ESG excellence is also important to UK consumers. In a recent poll by Opinium Research a third (37%) of UK adults would consider switching to a banking provider with stronger credentials in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG).

Despite this, only 15% of UK adults currently know what their provider’s ESG rating is. This has prompted suggestion that a clearer ‘kite mark’ system should be put in place to help consumers easily identify banks that meet ethical and environmental standards. Over half of all UK adults (57%), approximately 30 million people, would support such a system.

Commenting on the research findings, Deb Darlington continued:
“The research shows that a significant number of UK consumers care about the impact their bank is having on environmental and social issues. But with no clear way to see how each bank ranks it’s not enabling people to make an informed decision on whether they could move their banking preferences to have a more positive impact on the issues they care about.

“Where people choose to bank can significantly influence their social impact and their personal carbon footprint. We would welcome a clearer system to help customers understand the ethical implications of where they bank and will continue to look at that as we consider future campaigns that promote our Bank as the best ESG rated choice for UK consumers.”