- Written by Tom Espiner
- BBC News business reporter
image source, national advertising
A national ad featuring actor Dominic West and which claimed the building society was not closing its branches has been banned.
Indeed, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has announced that Nationwide is closing its branches.
It was also not sufficiently clear whether the nationwide pledge of no further closures would end in 2026, the watchdog added.
One of the complaints about the ad came from Santander.
Although the bank was mentioned in the ad, it said it had closed fewer branches than Nationwide in the year before the ad campaign.
Banks have been closing branches for decades. In the mid-1980s, there were more than 21,000 branches, but by the 2020s that number had fallen by more than half.
Banks have recently claimed that demand has declined due to changing customer habits and increased use of online banking.
But branch closures are hurting many people, including people with disabilities, the elderly, people living in rural areas and small businesses, the government said. Recent House of Lords reports.
The national ad campaign featured Dominic West as the boss of a fictitious major bank who mocks customers while planning to close branches. West has previously played Jimmy McNulty on the hit series The Wire and Prince Charles on Netflix’s hit series The Crown. Advertisements were aired on television, radio, and in the press.
The ad contrasts the fictional bank with Nationwide and carries the slogan, “Unlike the big banks, we don’t close branches.”
“Misleading”
The ad refers to Lloyds Banking Group, which includes Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank, as well as NatWest, Barclays, Santander and HSBC.
The ad has 281 accusers, including the City of Santander, who disputed that the ad was misleading, claiming Nationwide had recently closed or reduced opening hours for many of its branches.
Santander will close six branches in 2023.
In contrast, Nationwide closed two branches in 2023, but had closed 14 branches in the 12 months prior to the campaign.
Nationwide closed 152 stores, or 20% of its branches, over a 10-year period. Although this percentage is smaller than its advertised competitors, it is still a “significant number”, ASA said.
Additionally, in 2019, Nationwide made a “branch commitment” to not leave the towns and cities in which its branches are located unless there are “circumstances beyond our control.”
The building society renewed this in 2023, pledging not to close any branches until at least 2026. He later extended it until 2028.
The ASA decided that the advertisement did not make it sufficiently clear that the promise was likely to be short-term.
Nationwide said, “Thanks to the investments we’ve made to keep our branches open, we now have more brands than any other and are the last remaining brand in more than 90 communities. means,” he said.
The spokesperson added that the building society was “pleased to have the opportunity to further clarify the branch’s currently extended commitment to keep all branches open until early 2028”. .
