Progression
The Brief
Make ten thousand finance professionals believe their career has a path
Barclays was launching Progression — a career development platform and competency framework for Group Finance. But frameworks don’t inspire people. The platform needed employees to complete self-evaluations, identify skills gaps, and actively plan their careers. Without emotional buy-in from the workforce, the investment risked becoming another HR tool that nobody used.
The Solution
Two films. One trail. A reason to start running
A cinematic trailer and a companion conversation film, both shot outdoors in the Surrey Hills during pandemic restrictions. The trailer used a trail-running metaphor to make career progression feel energetic and personal. The conversation film paired a colleague with the Chief Financial Officer of Barclays UK — proving that leadership was invested in every individual’s growth.
Your career path
The framework was built. The belief was missing.
Group Finance at Barclays spans thousands of professionals across multiple functions and geographies. Historically, career progression in the division lacked consistency — job titles, competencies, and expectations varied widely, making it difficult for employees to understand what was needed to advance.
Barclays had built Progression to fix this: a job catalogue and competency framework mapping every role, with self-evaluation tools to help colleagues identify gaps. The investment was significant. But a framework only delivers value if people engage with it.
The brief arrived during the pandemic, adding logistical constraints to the creative challenge. Indoor filming was impossible. The production had to be safe, feasible, and powerful enough to make people care about a competency framework — not a natural starting point for emotional engagement.
Our Approach
Turn a constraint into a metaphor
Covid forced us outdoors. We turned that restriction into an advantage. The Surrey Hills became the setting for a trail-running metaphor — paths forking, terrain changing, a protagonist finding her way. Career progression isn’t a straight line. Neither is a trail.
The trailer featured a female protagonist in sportswear, running through woodland trails voiced by actress Mandeep Dhillon — energetic, warm, and tonally precise. The companion film took a different approach: an informal conversation between a colleague and James Mack, CFO of Barclays UK, filmed simultaneously in the hills and via video call from his home.
The dual format was deliberate. The trailer created excitement and urgency. The conversation film created trust — showing that senior leadership was genuinely invested in colleagues’ development. Together, they gave the Progression platform both the energy and the credibility it needed to land.
Launching Progression
Key Project Assets
Cinematic Trail-Running Trailer
An energetic launch film using a trail-running metaphor to position career progression as a personal, active journey — not a corporate process.
Leadership Conversation Film
An informal dialogue between a colleague and Barclays UK’s CFO, demonstrating that investment in career development comes from the very top of the organisation.
Pandemic-Proof Production Framework
An outdoor filming approach that turned Covid restrictions into a creative advantage — proving that constraint and quality are not mutually exclusive.
Impact
The films gave Barclays’ Progression platform the emotional launchpad it needed — transforming a competency framework into something people wanted to engage with.
Progression — Leadership Conversation
Project Insights
From framework to feeling
Nobody gets excited about a competency framework. But everyone gets excited about the feeling that their career has a direction and that someone senior cares about it. The trail-running metaphor gave Progression a visual language that felt personal, not procedural.
A pandemic, two filming locations connected by video call, and a CFO willing to have a real conversation with a real colleague. Sometimes the best production plan is the one that circumstances force you to invent.
The films created an energetic, approachable entry point for a programme that could easily have felt dry and corporate. The dual perspective — colleague and CFO — was the key to making people believe in it.
Dan Evans, Director of Film — We Are Tilt
