Advertising, promotion, and the emergence of a ‘national’ building society movement in interwar Britain
This strand of research examines the spectacular transformation of building societies during the 1920s and 1930s.What had been a collection of local or regionally-based organisations in 1914 rapidly became dominated by a relatively small group of societies with national ambitions. In 1922 the largest eight building societies had collective assets of only £39 million; by 1939 this had risen to £361 million. Furthermore, with the exception of the Halifax, the emergence of 'nationwide' building societies during this period occurred almost entirely via internal growth and territorial expansion, rather than amalgamation. The research analyses case-studies of several societies that ranked among the top eight during the interwar period, including both rapidly expanding southern societies such as the Abbey Road and Woolwich, and major northern-based societies such as the Halifax.
Themes
This project examines the role of advertising and promotion in the successful development of nationwide building societies and the market conditions that gave advertising a crucial role in the expansion strategies of the major societies. The new regional divide in interwar Britain between the prosperous South and the depressed regions of outer-Britain had upset the traditional geography of the building society movement. During the early 1920s the northern societies found themselves with funds that exceeded local demand for mortgages. Conversely their hitherto smaller southern counterparts could not meet local demand for mortgages from local investors. Thus both northern and southern societies had strong incentives to expand into the others' territories to balance their inflow of funds with their mortgage business. Advertising proved a key means for expanding societies:
- to establish a presence in regions where they had not previously been active.
- It facilitated a low-cost strategy of geographical expansion mainly via agencies, rather than branch networks. Agents had less of a public presence than branches and the expanding societies skilfully used advertising and promotion to compensate for this lack of local visibility.
- during the 1930s it became one of the few unregulated means of competition, thus assuming prime importance.
- it was an importance means to counteract increasing competition for small savers from large-scale clearing banks.
We will examine both the role of advertising in these societies' rapid growth and territorial expansion and explore the marketing messages used to promote the ideology of mass home ownership and to attract the funds of large numbers of small and medium-savers.
Outputs
‘Saving for Safety and Loans for Homes: Advertising, promotion, and the emergence of a ‘national’ building society movement in interwar Britain’, with Peter Scott, forthcoming.
Image source: The Times, Thursday, Apr 13, 1939, p.. 7, Issue 48278.
