The New HSBC Campaign Is Bad, Actually

Wow, I love Banksy

This new HSBC ad campaign? It's Not Good. Let's go through why, step by step. Think of this post like an expanding brain meme in essay form. Here's the actual ad, by the way:

Broke: "The ad is good because it's against Brexit!"

Let's get this out of the way: "That's the bad argument? Yikes, fam, didn't realise you were a Brexiteer..." I'm not a Brexiteer. I know I said I was against globalisation in the last post, but I'm not particularly opposed to the sentiment expressed in the adverts. I like chicken tikka masala (and sweet and sour chicken, doner kebabs, etc.), I enjoy a continental lager from time to time, and the only reason I don't currently support a Belgian striker is Benteke's injured and Freedman won't pull the trigger and bring in Batshuayi. I may have my reservations, but I also accept I live in a thoroughly globalised world and that isn't going to change anytime soon, and it especially wouldn't be changed by Brexit.

This post isn't really about Brexit, but I'll make my views clear in any case: Brexit is the ultimate failing of our political class. It was suggested by a spineless bellend who didn't believe in it in an attempt to placate his own party, who have been divided on the issue for countless years, and to serve as an easily removable pledge in case he failed to win a majority at the next general election and had to negotiate with the other spineless bellend party. He accidentally won, then the plebs accidentally voted for Brexit, so he decided he couldn't really be arsed following through and walked off humming a cute little tune like he hadn't just destroyed the country. Now, neither major party can agree on what needs to be done, and they're both trying to recalculate their views based on what "the people" want, but they have no idea what that entails, so things become even less clear, yadda yadda you know this bit, it's happening. This was always going to happen. Brexit is impossible to do correctly partly because of the financialised, globalised way the world is, and partly because all our politicians, yes, you too, are spineless bellends, and that's why we shouldn't have voted for it. But, like I said, this post isn't really about Brexit.

"Okay, so you're against Brexit, and so is the ad. Where's the beef?"

Woke: "The ad is bad because it fails to effectively argue against Brexit!"

Consider the following: you're a person who voted for Brexit, and you see this ad? Is it gonna sway you? You like the odd takeaway, sure, but you don't remember being SO MANY on your high street, and you definitely don't remember all the houses down your residential road smelling of curry. "India isn't in Europe, why are you bringing that up when this is about Brexit?" Number one, the ad did it first, and number two, if you think most people in this country voted for Brexit for reasons other than "GYPPOS, NIGGERS, AND PAKIS OUTTTTT" you should probably leave the blog, I think there's an In The Night Garden marathon on CBeebies in a few minutes. And as for football, you may cheer for the [Belgian/Argentinian] striker (I've seen both permutations, presumably to appeal to both halves of Manchester), but you definitely remember a time when you could support someone English (and I mean actually English, not one of those pigs-born-in-a-stable-that-think-they're-horses), or at the very worst, Northern Irish, and that period of time was definitely way better. Maybe it was the football, and maybe it was the dying throes of an industrial nation casting half its constituents to the wastelands, but it was 100% better.

Shameless stereotyping of the contingent who voted for Brexit aside, this is the most obvious counterargument to the 'Broke' section of the piece. There is a disaffected, ignored, sizeable section of our population for whom the things in this advert do not constitute thriving, but a step in the wrong direction, away from proper British values. I would go a step further and say that there are definitely people who aren't fervently xenophobic, who actually do like the aforementioned consumer goods, but these things alone are simply not good enough. "Sorry you have to work at two call centres and three warehouses to make ends meet because the concept of a 'steady job' is unattainable for the precariat, and all the money at your children's school goes towards teaching foreign kids basic English, but at least you have pizza and Carlsberg, right?" No, not right at all. "That school thing isn't right, you've been done by Project Fear!" Sweetheart, I went to primary school in Mitcham, I know where the money went, where the money HAD to go in order for the school to function even remotely like an actual school, especially in the years below mine, which suggests the problem was, and is, only getting worse. "B-b-but Mitcham's s-still 52% English!" Guarantee if you looked solely at under-30's it'd be a different, much more peak, story for 'English'. Don't forget this is a demographic issue of age as well as ethnicity, in any case you see my point about the ad failing, moving on.

Consider the actions of HSBC too now, which we haven't done so far. Let's assume this advert was designed to sway as many people as possible from supporting Brexit to opposing it. There are two "components" to the campaign, I guess; there's the TV advert with Ayoade, which broadcasts everywhere, and which I'm going to conveniently ignore, and then there's the physical poster campaign. If you're trying to make a maximally effective anti-Brexit poster campaign, your advertising targets are obvious, and mostly on the east coast: the five places that voted Brexit in the biggest numbers are Boston and South Holland (Lincolnshire), Castle Point and Thurrock (Essex), and Great Yarmouth (Suffolk). Where has this poster campaign been rolled out? London (overall 60% remain), Leeds (50.3% remain), Manchester (60% remain), and Birmingham (50.4% leave). I knew that was going to be the case from the moment I saw the poster for the first time, in Paddington Station (London Borough (LB) of Westminster, 69% remain), which is why I immediately went searching for all these stats. I hadn't seen it in the week I'd spent at a friend's in North Somerset (52.2% leave), nor the time at my father's in Eastbourne (57.3% leave), nor our old flat in Wallington (LB Sutton, 53.7% leave). In case my point isn't clear, HSBC cannot seriously expect campaigns in Paddington and Leeds to somehow convert people from Great Yarmouth and South Holland, can they? Clearly this is a terrible ad campaign and HSBC should take a good hard look at themselves. How could they be so stupid?

Bespoke: "The ad isn't trying to convert anyone, it's all about image!"

HSBC aren't stupid. They're at least smarter than me, because they're an incredibly successful multinational corporation, and I almost vacuumed one of my dreadlocks off my head cleaning my room yesterday. So let's push the boat out and suggest they're probably aware of what I said in 'Woke.' They know where Leave was successful, and they know where they've put their ad campaigns. What we're left with is the idea that "stopping Brexit with an ad" wasn't their plan. Hey, look, here's them admitting that. So what's their endgame?
Obviously, HSBC is trying to position itself, in the minds of city dwellers, as a truly international bank that's on the people's side, as long as those people live in London, Birmingham, Manchester, or Leeds, and they have a couple of quid to deposit. This is good, old-fashioned branding, with a dash of damage control to taste.
"Damage control?" Remember the global financial crisis from ten (fucking hell, ten) years ago? It doesn't matter what they contributed to that positively or negatively, people will naturally distrust HSBC as a result. I don't know how much they can be blamed for the crisis, and I study economics (very badly, but still), so what hope does anyone have, let alone bosswoman who works five jobs from part two? All we know is banks = bad, doesn't matter which one. This attitude will be especially prevalent in the metropolitan elite in the big cities: they're educated enough to have a vague idea of what happened, maybe they watched Inside Job or something, or failing that, they're simply young enough to have grown up in a period when their parents, and the TV, vilified the major banks. It doesn't help that the metropolitan elite skews left as a group, so their natural disposition is one of hatred towards successful, big corporations.

Simply put, that can't run. Young banlieusards make money, and if they aren't banking with HSBC, they're banking with someone else. Therefore, it's in HSBC's best interests to risk losing the support of old people (they'll die soon, and anyway the pension system is about to fall apart so it's not like they'll be balling in the long-term) and make sure the youngers know that HSBC's values sync up with their own. Offering a non-abysmal interest rate on savings might do a little bit for revenue, but nothing speaks to Millenials more than shared values. "See, we like football and takeaways too! We're not fuddy-duddies like Barclays or whatever the fuck." What old person do you know that goes to artisanal coffee shops or drinks Buds with the boys? Exactly. An extra point in my favour: I saw this advert waiting for the Circle Line so I could get back to ends from Paddington, and a friend saw it first in the Metro somewhere in the West Yorkshire sprawl - indeed it was her positive reaction, the 'Broke' section of the post, coupled with my extreme distaste, this part, that prompted me to start investigating, and eventually to write the piece. I'm sorry this has turned into a 2,600-word dump on you, by the way, love, but I feel you'll appreciate the result. Anyway, my point is HSBC are definitely trying to attract left-leaning commuters like us. You can't get on the Tube without seeing the ads, and the Metro is the thing you casually thumb through when you're bored on [the public transport of your choice, I pick Tramlink]. This is a very effectively targeted ad campaign, focused on rehabilitating HSBC's image, and worse still, it seems like it's worked (doubling of whatever the fuck 'comms awareness' is, positive buzz, etc.). You should all be very ashamed of yourselves.

"Damn, that's actually a relatively convincing argument. You're pretty smart!" Thanks, but that's what worries me. So far, this essay makes me seem like some all-seeing, unfathomably smart übermensch, and that can't be right (cf. Vacuumgate above). No way I've got this problem right, and on two levels, no less, using pure instinct. So, TLP you wanna come out here and tell me why I'm wrong?

Roanoke: "The ad isn't even for HSBC! It's for E V E R Y T H I N G" 

"Ok, I was with you for the last three, but now you're moving proper mad." Fair, but this is interesting, I promise.
A sort of tangent; advertising is almost always aspirational, "not representational, and for sure not inspirational" now. We all know this, consciously or not. The point is never just "this car does good mileage!", you need to see the car driving through somewhere hyper-futuristic so you feel ahead of the curve, or through somewhere old so you feel even more ahead of the curve, "look at these mugs on gondolas when I'm in my Beamer". This is why perfume ads are just a series of impossibly cool things happening to incredibly beautiful people, shot incredibly artistically, and don't involve the perfume at all. "This is the type of person who wears this perfume! Don't you wanna be like that? Good thing the equation works both ways, if you wear this perfume, you too can be this gorgeous, arty, and cool! What does it smell like? uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"
That's what's happening here. Everyone is at least a little bit narcissistic in this society, and for our purposes, that manifests itself as a desire to conform to what TLP repeatedly calls an "omnipotent entity," that tells you you're real. Since narcissism can be thought of as a lack of internal personhood, we scramble for something, anything, to tell us that we have an identity. Something that tells you, "you are this type of person, now go forth and be." The closest thing to that omnipotent entity we have is Society in general, and, as he notes, advertising is "society's window on you", i.e. how society judges.

We've entered a sort of symbiotic relationship with advertising. Advertising provides you with a framework through which you see the world, and not only do you allow it to brand itself, it brands you and vice versa. That isn't very clear, so I'll skip straight to the meat: I did fuck up, because I allowed HSBC to define my values for me. "How?" Go back to 'Broke': why do these specific things form the quintessentially Remainer outlook on the UK? Because HSBC decided to associate them with Remainers. You are not learning that they're an anti-Brexit bank - they already explicitly denied that, remember? - you're learning that this is what Remainers look like, and this is what Remainers BUY, especially. "Remainers like football, and takeaways, and lager, okay?" says HSBC, and I look at my Crystal Palace shirt, my bottle of Carlsberg I bought at a football game, and my hoodie strewn with stray droplets of chilli sauce, and I say "Masha'allah, I'm doing 'Remainer' right." Doesn't matter that I hate the ad, I still defined "my lot" (i.e. other Remainers) by their propensity to buy certain consumer goods, and defined "them lot" (i.e. Brexiteers) as people who wouldn't be satisfied by those products.

I'm going to focus on the football for a second because that's kinda my thing: SINCE WHEN WAS FOOTBALL A PASTIME FOR THE METROPOLITAN ELITE????? The correct answer is, of course, "roughly since 1992," for reasons which will be expanded in another post, probably, but my objection remains. Football may not be the utter clusterfuck of hooliganism and muddy, waterlogged pitches that it was in the 1970s, but until very recently you'd still probably think of it as something for the common man, a working-class phenomenon that entertained the poors while the rich watched rugby, or horseracing. Now, though? Football is just as much a pursuit of left-leaning, middle-class soyboys like me, in no small part because its working class reputation makes it a good way to appear authentic, but mostly because it's more expensive, and therefore more lucrative, and therefore gets marketed hard, even in ads that aren't for football, like the one we've been talking about all blogpost.

It is VITALLY important that you do not forget this.

I'm going to directly pull from TLP and simply change the words around because he completely nails it here: "You're so clever, seeing through it (by the way, check the Twitter replies to this post to see people who, like me, thought they had it all worked out) -- you know banking with HSBC doesn't make you a principled, truly authentic Remainer, nor will it attract someone who is. But what you don't realize you're learning is that this is what principled, authentic Remainers look like. HSBC is selling Manchester United, plc.  And Man U are having a sale; for the right price you can be authentic forever."

It's fucking over, boyos. Anyone else kinda fancy drinking some Stella and ordering some takeaway off JustEat.com while the world burns?