It’s funny… Considering the vast amounts of our money swilling around inside pension funds they still remain labelled a ‘low interest’ category.
That distant part of our finances we seem more than happy to forget about, hoping it’ll come up roses when we’re old… Pensions. We don’t need to worry about those now do we?
The truth is most of us tick along on autopilot, struggling to remember which companies are looking after which nest egg and largely clueless about what our investment is actually being used for, until it is finally time to consider retirement.
So, if you do happen to be a brand in the pension space it can be hard to create any type of interest in yourself. Something not made any easier if you happen to be a carbon copy of the company next door. It is unfortunately a category bobbing around in the sea of same, trying to avoid probing questions. Luckily People’s Pension was a different kind of company, and this is how we made this historically quiet organisation come alive and take a few prisoners.
The thing with pensions is that most people have them, but know very little about them. So, most people have that box ticked. As an employee you may already have one through work or as CEO you may have already picked the provider your staff will get. Either way an active switch is one of the only real way providers can grow despite being so universal.
So, we started with a simple behavioural question, not How do we raise awareness? but How do we make people question their current provider or rethink their candidate shortlist?
To do this we need to wake people up a bit. Make them draw comparisons. It was time to poke the bear, or should that be the fat cat.
The big truth at the heart of People’s Pension is that they don’t have shareholders. No one syphoning away part of your hard-earned cash, creaming off the top without you noticing. Creatively we wanted to expose this truth in a way that would jolt people and get them questioning their own provider. We now had an enemy; those characters pinching your profits and our direction was set.
Our target would be the fat cats, all bloated and grotesque, and the quickest cultural short cut that everyone (thanks so the front pages) would get. We the backed this up with a second dramatisation showing actual claw grabbers, those rigged games in arcades that also leave you high and dry. Every execution then provided a them and us moment, so while most pensions feed the fat cats or reach in and shamefully grab your money, People’s Pension simply gives money back to members. Simple, power, true.
Quickly we realised the brand identity itself also needed a shot in the arm so surround this new approach, something that would feel more powerful and more active. As we had more in common with protest brands and political party activism than other pension providers we rebranded with a new style that was bold, proud with just the right about of cut and paste punk.
The campaign launched across digital, radio and the classic protest medium of OOH prompting an immediate rise in brand search.
Words by: Matt Buttrick