1972: BOOM as millions flash their new plastic.
1974: BUST Inflation and UK bailed out by IMF.

When your work worries government ministers, MPs and church leaders and generates the highest volume of correspondence The Times business section has ever received, it pays to have strong backing to justify the case for Britain’s cashless society.

Especially when an attack dog MP claims some of the words relating to your client’s new service “have been disingenuous in the extreme and lay themselves open to the charge of displaying considerable arrogance,” – accusations made within parliamentary privilege – a quick rebuttal is often the best way to control the debate.

The “backing” to my carefully researched editorial was £300M in readies from UK banks determined to launch Britain’s biggest credit card. The fightback was spearheaded by a large cartoon in The Sun that proved pivotal to our campaign and, ensured we got the last laugh.

By 1972 I had been headhunted for a position at Lexington Public Relations, part of the world’s biggest (and poshest) advertising agency, J Walter Thompson. They had landed a hush-hush new account that needed strong editorial support across national and other media sectors. Persuasive writing tailored for broadsheets, red tops, and trade publications was the main requirement. The task and call to action landed on my desk within days of taking up the position in their Mayfair offices.

Although Lexington was based just around the corner on Hill Street, I spent long hours at 40 Berkeley Square, JWT Europe’s head office. I became part of the large creative team assembled for the new account, which didn’t yet have a name. It was in the banking sector and the account had been introduced to JWT through NatWest Bank, one of the agency’s biggest established clients.

I read the background briefing docs swirling around the account group and gleaned that a large group of UK banks was to launch a joint credit card to cash in on the dreadful state of Britain’s economy. It seemed the Government had no money, the general public likewise, trade unions were demanding more money and inflation was becoming a big problem, eating up family savings.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Anthony Barber, was struggling against a tsunami of poor economic figures, tax reforms, oil price inflation, decimalisation, trade union demands and strike threats. In the 1972 budget, the Chancellor made a dash for growth, with large tax cuts to spur economic expansion. Quite a workload for a politician who didn’t want the job in the first place.

To counter the nation’s fiscal woes, the Government had expanded the money supply and floated the pound. Banks saw they could make extra profits by giving citizens more spending power. NatWest, Midland and Lloyds joined as the lead organisations in a new consortium that included 11 regional banking subsidiaries. These would form the Joint Credit Card Company Ltd (JCCC) and operate a new credit card to be issued by the company.

Credit card benefits

By now, the creative team at JWT had isolated the brand name, consumer-tested it and persuaded the JCCC to adopt the name and copyright the distinctive logo. It was to be called Access. And a £10M supporting advertising campaign to ram home the concept and benefits of credit card purchasing was prepared and approved.

JCCC lawyers registered the name and logo as a trademark and quietly bought out – or constrained – companies across the UK and Europe with “Access” in their title.

The editorial task was to prepare the media, the retail sector and the cash-strapped potential card customers for the upcoming “cashless revolution”. Consumers could put all spending on the new card and repay it monthly with minimum payments and revolving credit.

I researched the banking industry and the progress of credit cards in America, where they had launched successfully many years earlier. I prepared feature material for Britain’s newspapers and relevant consumer and trade magazines and built up a media mailing list for press releases.

Cashless revolution

A series of articles and press releases in financial-sector media started the debate: “Towards the cashless society.” As the campaign progressed, editorial coverage swept through successive retail and service sector media. Press cuttings poured in from trade and professional media. We copied, bound and circulated these daily to the participating banks. They formed an ongoing record of the media and public’s perception of, and attitude towards, credit cards.

It was a major educational programme with a generous budget within the £10M JCCC had allocated for launch marketing. Retailers might object to paying transaction charges levied on each card sale. I used research showing the average cash sale in some retail sectors was £2; cheque sales were 300 per cent higher at £6. Then, using US figures, we had to show retailers how a credit card would generate sales substantially higher than the average cheque sale.

JCCC banks planned to inject £300M into the UK economy by issuing credit cards to three million customers. And only retailers signing up would stand a chance of getting their share of the booty. The message also alluded to millions of UK citizens flooding onto the High Streets waving plastic cards carrying revolving credit issued by their personal bank…

Many retailers even knew how the Access back-office system worked: a card sale would be credited to their bank account as cash when they paid in sales voucher slips at their normal bank branch.

Subsequently, the JCCC sales force found a higher percentage of well-briefed and willing retailer signees than they might otherwise have expected when they rolled up in their new company cars to pitch the new service.

The editorial, meant to soften up the public for a cashless society, spread to national and regional dailies. At times, I became something of a “writing factory”, churning out features for specific retail sectors and alerting them to the golden eggs laid by the fat goose heading their way. Whilst the banks and High Street traders stood to make £millions through extra sales, they also had to convince potential cardholders they could maximise the card’s benefits.

Millions of pounds had been committed to cover the new technology; a huge service centre in Southend had been opened and staffed. Offices in Trafalgar Square replaced temporary facilities in Broad Street, City of London. I shuttled between the JCCC offices and the partner banks to source images and potential storylines for the hundreds of publications we were targeting.

The media blitz continued for months. Radio and television panels discussed the “debt is bad” aspects, even as the fiscal benefits argument gradually prevailed with the Great British Public.

I flew with the top JCCC officials to the Channel Islands for a soft launch of Access to retailers, hoteliers and service companies, most of whom banked with local banks owned by JCCC partners. A conference and presentation on Access and the cashless society at the Hotel de France, Jersey went down very well – particularly with retailers in the Islands’ duty-free sector.

All the participating banks provided staff from their head offices and branches to be trained as sales reps, visit the most likely retailers, and sign them up on agreements that gave the JCCC a cut of between 2% and 5% of each card transaction.

Access field sales force gets on the road…

When the new sales force was trained and ready to start work, I came up with a spectacular PR stunt to launch the new distinctive Access logo, which would cover one side of the credit card itself and be displayed on decals in the windows and on sales counters of participating outlets.

Around 100 of the Access salespeople were to be given company cars supplied by Bristol Street Motors in Bristol. I arranged for the cars to be transported to a field outside the city and parked up in the shape of the Access logo. I called in a helicopter and a photographer to shoot the car version of the logo from the air.

When we were happy with the cars’ setup and positioning, we took the shots. The over-excited salesmen were then allocated their new vehicles – few bank staff had been given company cars previously – before driving off to all the corners of the UK. I did wonder how many might be involved in prangs on that first journey?

I used the aerial logo photo editorially and paired it with the launch of the slogan dreamed up by the brilliant team of JWT creatives:

“Access takes the waiting out of wanting”.

Bumps along the way

By then, media coverage was extensive and, while mainly positive, it quickly sparked a wave of protest from politicians, the clergy, social campaigners and “activists”. They saw the card and its slogan as encouraging “poor people” to borrow money and spend on things they otherwise couldn’t afford.

The marketing was a bit blatant and no one could mistake the message: “With this card you can buy the things you want, when you want them. And you can spread the cost over a period of time that you choose. So you can enjoy your new (hi-fi/holiday/sports equipment) right away. You are in control of your household spending.”

Summed up beautifully with the launch advertising slogan: Access Takes the Waiting Out of Wanting.

But this high-risk strategy had JCCC CEO Hugh Cameron and me manning the parapets as some Government ministers and left-wing MPs thought the slogan “irresponsible”. The House of Commons debated the JCCC’s marketing, PR, card distribution and interest rates – they all came under fire.

Public concern

One MP, Dr John Gilbert (Dudley), was scathing about Access marketing and its attitude to “unsolicited credit”. He claimed: “Some of the excuses put forward by spokesmen for the Access card have been disingenuous in the extreme and lay themselves open to the charge of displaying considerable arrogance.”

Disingenuous, Moi? Never. Arrogant? Not in the least. Dr Gilbert, who was on his feet for an hour in the House of Commons, also criticised the wording of the Access card terms and conditions for consumers.

He said: “There are, however, certain aspects of the introduction of the Access credit card system which have given rise to a considerable degree of public concern. I understand that so great is the public concern that The Times business section has received a greater volume of correspondence on this issue than it has on any other that it can remember.” 

Bizarrely, the MP then told Parliament: “I have more than one credit card myself and I find them extremely useful. I think that everybody must welcome any advance towards a society where the use of cash becomes less necessary and less frequent.

Protesters wanted the marketing campaign and ads pulled because they claimed they encouraged people to get into debt. “A millstone around the neck” was one take. The protesters had to be faced down. Access CEO Hugh Cameron became the “face” of the new card, as he batted away the criticisms, citing favourable ongoing consumer surveys and benefits to the ailing British economy.

The Sun’s clever cartoonist Paul Rigby dived into the debate with a four-column cartoon on page six depicting Chancellor Barber with a blown-up Access card on the wall behind him. Caricatures of agitated CBI fat cats, TUC union chiefs, including miner’s leftie leader Arthur Scargill, ranged around a boardroom table in a crisis meeting… The speech caption for Barber read:

 “So forget wages, prices, money – we’re sending EVERYONE a credit card!”

That was just the job – very helpful at a crucial time in our campaign. While many were outraged at “This millstone around the necks of families,” millions laughed at the cartoon and all the way to the shops, waving their shiny new Access cards.

Cartoon presentation

It was the Sun that swung it! I rang the newsdesk and they kindly biked over the original cartoon, which I then had framed and presented to Hugh Cameron. He loved it. It has hung on his office wall thereafter. Subsequently, he progressed rapidly through the upper echelons of NatWest Bank to become its Southeast Area Director. And Hugh Cameron proved to be a most useful referee for me in landing one of the biggest media opportunities on the planet a few years later.

“The function of the editorial cartoon is to convince the public that they are taking themselves and the world at large far too seriously.”

Paul Rigby, a top cartoonist for Murdoch newspapers

By launch day, 23 October 1972, 60,000 places in the UK could let three million Access cardholders take the waiting out of wanting. Just in time for Christmas shopping, and record spending was boosted by Access.

Subsequently, there were a few technical hitches to be explained away via press statements, but steadily the nation morphed into the (almost) cashless society we have become today – despite the boom and bust of the 1970s, the divisive Thatcher years, EU fiascos and the bizarre decade-long run of the Blair & Brown Show.

In February 1973 I treated a group of JCCC marketing execs to a celebratory night of “happy music” at the Royal Albert Hall. It was provided by the James Last Orchestra, a firm favourite of Midland Bank staffers, making its debut at the venue. I used my Access card to pay for the tickets and welcome drinks. Its successor, the Visa Debit card, currently makes 95% of all my purchases – thanks to Covid-19 – and my prediction of a cashless society has been realised after 50 years…

UPDATE

Six years earlier, Barclays Bank, about to launch Barclaycard, had invited the other banks to share the set-up costs and technology for their own cards. No other UK banks took up the offer. They believed credit cards would not be a great success.

A monetary policy known as “Competition and Credit Control”, intended to increase competition among financial organisations by allowing them to set their own interest rates, ended in 1973. New Government legislation raised minimum repayments from the greater of £2 or 5% of the outstanding balance to the greater of £6 or 15% of the outstanding balance. Suddenly, the economic outlook for Access (and Barclaycard) became much more difficult.

The UK joined the EEC in January 1973 and enjoyed record GDP growth of 7.4% that year. It was also the first of the world recessional years marfked by industrial, social and political strife in Britain, The recession ended in 1978-1979 after the so-called “Winter of Discontent”.

From 1972 to 1977, advertising for Access was mainly in print media; many adverts appeared in the TV Times and Radio Times. In 1977, the hugely successful “Access – Your Flexible Friend” advertising campaign began and motivated consumers towards tactical purchasing

In 1973, JCCC bought a 15% share in Eurocard. In 1974, JCCC joined “Master Charge” (now MasterCard), which gave it access to the extensive worldwide network the company had already built.

Paul Rigby, a top cartoonist for Rupert Murdoch newspapers in Australia, UK and USA, said: “The function of the editorial cartoon is to convince the public that they are taking themselves and the world at large far too seriously.”

The James Last Orchestra subsequently appeared 90 times at the Royal Albert Hall between 1973 and 2015, making them the most frequent non–British performers to have played the venue. James Last always attracted a loyal and enthusiastic audience, with conga lines, dancing, and even whirling duck umbrellas a familiar sight in the crowd, while he led his orchestra in upbeat renditions of classical and popular favourites on stage.

History of Access credit card : : Future of cash – report