Simon Williams: ‘inventor of Co-op’s ethical stance’

Having allowed himself to be puffed by interviewer George Dearsley as the ‘man who invented the ethical stance of the Co-operative Bank’, Simon Williams may need reminding of why Robert Owen’s statue is outside the head office, but he gives an interesting interview below.

Simon Williams enabled the Co-op to rediscover ethics after ‘slogging through the market research cupboard’. It turned out that while most people banked with the Co-op for all the usual reasons, about five per cent chose the Co-op because they thought it was ethically sound. The marketing guru’s reaction – ‘where was that from, what was that all about?’ – will embarrass anyone with a sense of history.

The Co-op, which had been in decline for a couple of decades, had clearly lost touch with its founding moral purpose. Only after rediscovering this and repackaging it for today did it find strategic direction and recover.

Simon Williams reveals that this process of rediscovery was driven more by accident than design, but all’s well that ends well.