It would be hard to describe British Pathé, as anything other than an incredible life affirming brand; the newsreel and cinema archive (first started in Paris during the 1890’s) is a testament not only to the power of the silver screen, but the historical value of newsreel footage. In the era of the viral video; endless segments of cats, children and well, more cats – its renaissance could hardly be more timely. Hence my meeting with General Manager Alastair White, one of the three clever ‘brains’ who saw the opportunity to restore the company to its former glory, since losing it way in the 1970’s. In Alastair’s words; ‘Up until that point it was owned by the Daily Mail, and they’d sort of forgotten about it.’ Cue the mission; to bring the British Pathé archive to a whole new generation of historical and culture hungry audiences…

So how did the process start? ‘If you went up to anybody in the street,’ Alastair says, ‘and you asked them if they knew of British Pathé, unless they were forty five or fifty years old, they didn’t have the faintest idea what you were talking about. We thought that was a real shame; we bought the company because we felt that it was a great opportunity - and an under exploited brand.’


Bringing British Pathé to a wider audience is Alastair’s raison d’etre, utilising multi channel marketing in the pursuit of said goal. ‘We re-launched our website in January of this year, with the specific aim with directing it to the general public and it’s been a big success; they come to the site in tens and thousands, when they use to come in their hundreds.’ Twitter, Facebook and a variety of other social media platforms contribute to the British Pathé cause. ‘Facebook is our number one referral, Twitter second… But there are two more platforms that are proving to be very successful, I think they are called Pinterest and I can’t remember what the other one is,’ Alastair laughs. ‘I don’t pretend to fully understand them, I don’t think that I am ever going to fully understand the power of them… That’s the key - we just make sure we’ve got bright people who can master them.’

Providing the web-obsessed public with a cultural alternative to YouTube is only one of British Pathé’s revenue streams however. Not only does the brand license footage to producers, it also makes its own programmes, as well as offering schools and museums a subscription service that offers a legion of young (and old alike) direct access to historical data. In fact growing this side of the business is Alastair’s main area of focus over the next few years; ‘I want to be much more successful in the schools; that is a really important mission for us. I would like to have one hundred per cent of schools in the U.K.’

Given Alastair’s sizeable achievements, I’ve no doubt he’ll be ticking this goal off his list before long, but what of the challenges? There must have been some over the three short years since the partners took over the brand? ‘I think possibly the main challenge is to make it more contemporary and immediate, rather than something that only old people who remember it first time around are interested in. For that you have to somehow contextualise the brand in a slightly different way.’ Thinking outside the box is clearly the answer; ‘As well as old clips we make stills galleries that people can flick through and we write funny things next to them. So for instance we’ve had a gallery called Prince Phillip’s Greatest Quotes and another one called Funny Hats of The Nineteen Sixties. Things that are slightly funny and a bit quirky.’

Keeping the archive topical is another important factor in sustaining traffic. ‘We keep a very close eye of what’s going on in the news. If an anniversary happens, we’ll put it on a website, we’ll promote on our social media platforms, we’ll put it in our newsletter that goes out to the licensing community; we work very hard to make sure that these various sections of our business are all inter linked.’

Covering all the bases seems to be the name of the game, with Alastair at the forefront, never one to shy away from the dogged pursuit of brand awareness. ‘When we launched I did the rounds; we contacted every BBC local radio station and said ‘We’ve got some great footage for your region and some great stories, do you want to talk about it?’ he reminisces. ‘I went on a circuit and I did about thirty interviews for local BBC radio stations and then got invited onto BBC breakfast T.V and then onto the Jeremy Vine show.... That’s very good because not only does it bring the name to a wider group of people but it also embeds the name British Pathé into the BBC website, which consequently pushes you up the rankings. It was a carefully thought out strategy and we followed it step by step.’


With marketing tips aplenty, Alastair is nothing if not assertive, sitting across from me in a clean, sparse meeting room a stone’s throw from Great Portland Street. This is a man in charge, with the body language to match. Never one to forget the ‘personal touch’ however, because after all, that’s what British Pathé is about. ‘When I’m presenting British Pathé I go ‘Right I need a volunteer now!’ and then some poor devil eventually puts their hand in the air, and I say to them ‘Where were you born? And we look on British Pathé and see if we can find some footage, and of course that’s not much interest for anyone else in the room, but for that individual it’s fantastic. And we get emails every single day from people who have discovered relatives in the archive. Imagine what it would be like if you found footage of your grandfather in the archives, that would be no interest to anybody else, but for you it would be priceless wouldn’t it?’

Priceless indeed; an altruistic brand, with some serious potential for profit; ‘I think it’s maybe to do with the recession, things are tough, people are desperately nostalgic at the moment, they’re referring to the past; right down to The Rolling Stones still touring, people are extremely reminiscent, and I think it’s because the world is such a big complicated area now and we lose a little bit of ourselves… Things like archive footage gives us a sense of who we are. People can look at British Pathé and take out from it what is important to them.’

And last but certainly not least, what is Alastair’s favourite segment of footage? The question provokes a laugh… ‘It’s a bit of footage, just outtakes that’s all; football fans streaming out of the grounds in the early 1970’s after a football match. They’re wearing baggy trousers, denim jackets, feathered haircuts and every time I look at it I think ‘God! Surely any minute now I am going to walk out of that turnstile! And of course I never do, but for some reason (I don’t know why) that bit of footage touches me more than any other; it’s just an example of how [via British Pathé] people can access things that are personal to them.’

Interview by Alice Kahrmann 2012.