Teaching Financial Wellbeing

SITUATION: Our client conducted an in-depth data analysis of their employees’ retirement readiness and saw that people were leaving money on the table. Not surprisingly, participation patterns were highly influenced by life stage. After years of communicating details in a traditional manner, we helped them reach their people with a new spin: personifying money. If you had a conversation with your money, what would it say to you?

MY ROLE: Creative Director & Designer

CLIENT: Automotive Company*

CHALLENGE: How do you get busy people to truly focus on long-term savings? Let’s face it, retirement planning is complicated, time-consuming and intimidating. Focusing on pressing current-day needs like paying off student loans, mortgages, and saving for kids’ college funds, its easy to put off even thinking about retirement. It’s common to put off taking action, thinking you have plenty of time to deal with it in the future. BUT, the longer you delay saving, the harder it is. The sad part is, lots of employees leave a lot of money on the table both from employer matching and investment returns over the long haul. Don’t get me started on the value of compounded interest.

Even for a company offering rich benefits, success depends on employee understanding and participation. Besides, healthy workforce evolution relies on succession planning, so individual timelines can impact the company’s ability to retain key talent, as well.

SOLUTIONS:

LEAD WITH LIGHT HUMOR: Our campaign centered around the relationship we all have with our money. How we feel, think and treat money determines what we get from it. Do you take your money for granted? Or spend it all as soon as you get it, treating it like a one-night stand? Do you nurture it, consistently giving it attention and nurturing it?

AWARENESS TACTICS: Based on our team’s multi-segmented communication strategy, I conducted a tailored branding workshop. I directed concept development, leading three teams of designers & writers. Lucky for me, I also played the lead design role on the concept that was ultimately chosen. We promoted the campaign using a multimedia approach:

  • Leveraging the corporate environment, we printed posters and table tents that were displayed in offices and break rooms throughout North America

  • Participants also received printed and digital postcards

ONGOING EDUCATION: We produced a multi-year series of quarterly digital magazines. Feature stories focused on the needs of people at different life stages and levels of participation. We created relatable, data-inspired characters to illustrate how long-term investment pays off over time, and how the lack of early participation can result in disappointment later on. The client also increased promotion of informal lunch-and-learn sessions. These gave employees the opportunity to get answers to specific questions directly from the HR experts who design and maintain the plans.

BRAND STANDARDS: This effort required consistency over time, with content development from multiple sources. To aid internal client teams and other vendors, I developed brand standards in alignment with the over-arching corporate brand.

*Due to an NDA, this client’s name is confidential.

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