Student’s love story touched the bankers’ hearts

A WARRINGTON student looked to the past for an idea to promote the latest technological development by an international bank – and came up with a love story.
Alannah Garland, who is studying BTEC graphic design at Priestley College, created a marketing campaign for the planned “contactless cash” feature within Barclays’ mobile banking smartphone app.
Her vision to promote the feature – which allows customers to withdraw money from ATMs without inserting a card – was judged the best out of the entries.
For Alannah, though, it was more about the taking part than winning the online shopping voucher.
The 19-year-old said: “Working with Barclays was a character building experience that definitely took me out of my comfort zone.
“It has given me the confidence I need to go to university to study fashion promotion later this year. I will never forget the experience and definitely believe it will help me to achieve my goals.”
Alannah surprised judges by looking into Barclays’ past for the characters in her campaign. John and Pricilla were names that can be traced back to the Quaker founders of Barclays around 300 years ago.
In her 21st century marketing campaign the couple fall for one another after passing in the street. John uses his app to withdraw cash, but is also shown his future with Pricilla and proceeds to buy her flowers
with the money he’s taken out of the machine.
Tutor Paul McConnell said: “It was a great idea and one you can imagine seeing in a television advert. I was extremely pleased with all the students’ work and Alannah’s was of the highest quality.”
Barclays is a global financial services provider helping millions of customers all over the world to borrow, save and invest.
It facilitates one in every two card transactions in the UK.
The Priestley students had been working directly with the bank’s technology teams at its largest UK technology centre in Knutsford – home to 3,500 employees.
In a separate challenge the bank also asked those on the BTEC photography course to portray the diversity of technology life through images.