TY - JOUR

T1 - Zopa's lambs

T2 - video ads, internet banks, and the financialization of affect

AU - McKnight, John

AU - Fish, Adam Richard

PY - 2016/11/1

Y1 - 2016/11/1

N2 - This article is about how affect is mobilized through video advertising to encourage people to try new practices: discuss money and use peer-to-peer banking. A 2013 television commercial for a UK-based peer-to-peer lending firm demonstrates how affect is mobilized in the context of financialization in an age of austerity and increasing social inequality. The commercial, “Zopa Lambs,” assembles imagery of an idealized rural England to obscure geographical and class differences among its customers while positioning the firm as a trustworthy upholder of conservative banking values against predatory payday lenders and irresponsible global banking firms. While the firm is entirely internet-based, in an environment of relatively low financial and technological literacy, trust is constructed heavily through the use of traditional media. While financial instruments generally are marketed through affective associations with particular status circles, here that circle is constructed neither as a wealthy urban elite nor as a populist mass, but as the “sensible:” a weighted term carrying affective resonance with times of austerity, capital investment rather than consumption, and an idealized rural past.

AB - This article is about how affect is mobilized through video advertising to encourage people to try new practices: discuss money and use peer-to-peer banking. A 2013 television commercial for a UK-based peer-to-peer lending firm demonstrates how affect is mobilized in the context of financialization in an age of austerity and increasing social inequality. The commercial, “Zopa Lambs,” assembles imagery of an idealized rural England to obscure geographical and class differences among its customers while positioning the firm as a trustworthy upholder of conservative banking values against predatory payday lenders and irresponsible global banking firms. While the firm is entirely internet-based, in an environment of relatively low financial and technological literacy, trust is constructed heavily through the use of traditional media. While financial instruments generally are marketed through affective associations with particular status circles, here that circle is constructed neither as a wealthy urban elite nor as a populist mass, but as the “sensible:” a weighted term carrying affective resonance with times of austerity, capital investment rather than consumption, and an idealized rural past.

KW - peer to peer lending

KW - advertising

KW - financial services

KW - class

KW - rhetoric

M3 - Journal article

VL - 16

SP - 33

EP - 49

JO - Ephemera : Theory and Politics in Organization

JF - Ephemera : Theory and Politics in Organization

SN - 1473-2866

IS - 4

ER -