Invisible Brand

The imminence of ‘A-Day’ offers financial providers a fresh opportunity to reach out to target audiences. But to be successful, they need to rely rather more on insight and a good deal less on product features.

Amidst all the high hopes for A-Day and the forthcoming new pensions regime, there’s one optimistic possibility that I haven’t seen mentioned: maybe the brave new world will see some brave new advertising and marketing campaigns.

You really do have to go back a very long way indeed to bump into any great stuff about pensions. There’s been the odd not-too-shabby execution within overall brand campaigns: as I recall, pensions were the subject of the first commercial in Allied Dunbar’s excellent ‘For The Life You Don’t Yet Know’ campaign.

But for a body of advertising of a really exceptional standard, you have to think all the way back to the magnificent Albany Life work of the early 80s, and subjects like “Will You Be As Fortunate In Finding A Second Career?” (picture of Ronald Reagan in cowboy film) and “A 55-Year-Old Company Director Digging His Own Grave” (sad-looking bloke in cardigan digging the garden) and “What Does It Cost To Get Out Of It By The Time You’re 50?” (picture of a bunch of rats with horse-racing style numbers on them).

What these great ads did, and what so few others have done since, was to speak to their target group not about pensions, or even about money, but about their hopes and fears for the rest of their lives. This seems obvious, but it’s a point that’s almost universally ignored.

The unfashionable middle ground?
One reason, of course, is that in recent years there have actually been very few advertising and marketing campaigns about pensions. There was a brief flurry
at the time of the introduction of stakeholder – I remember a Norwich Union campaign showing gritty but ultimately rather pointless pictures of working people, including a fisherman with a handsome beard. But speaking for myself, as someone who has been right through the prime pension-buying years and is now evolving in a state of some surprise and befuddlement into the peak retirement-planning years, I can’t actually remember a pensions marketing campaign that targeted me effectively and showed real insight into what makes me tick.

You might say that this is because perception-forming, awareness-building product category campaigns like this have been out of favour in financial services for a long time. They occupy an unfashionable middle ground in between high-level perception-forming, awareness-building brand campaigns (usually from big providers and usually on television) and low-level response-generating campaigns for products in responsive categories (general insurance, credit cards, savings, personal loans).

That’s a fact, but is it an explanation? Might, say, Clerical Medical – back in the days when they used to spend several million pounds a year trying to persuade broadly upmarket consumers that they were The Choice Of The Professional – not have done better to pull the plug on its vacuous brand TV campaign about vicars and doctors, and concentrate instead on trying to show real insight (probably in print) into the way that the professionals in question thought and felt about the remainder of their working lives, and the long decades that would hopefully unfold thereafter?

It can be done
Much smaller and strategically less important product categories have seen much more insightful and engaging campaigns. Even a very small and not very profitable category like savings for children and grandchildren has a stronger track record – not least, I have to say, because of our own work for Jump and Family Investments

Things may be about to change. Pensions simplification is certainly causing a lot of excitement among the producers and distributors, and it would be reasonable to imagine that the media will be thick with new campaigns as organisations seek to build credibility, engagement and profile in the field.

The potential is certainly there. For a number of reasons, the cocktail of emotions around the subject of pensions is more potent than ever. The stock market crash of 2001/3 injected a very large measure of doubt, negativity and cynicism. The new post-A-Day rules, particularly around property investment, will add a large slug of excitement and enthusiasm (probably misplaced).

Is there anybody out there
But up till now – admittedly with a few months still to go – the omens aren’t massively encouraging. Most of the flurry of new campaigns we’ve seen to date are second-rate tactical lead generation affairs whose main aim is to direct consumers towards allegedly-informative websites which in fact have little to offer beyond contact details for the advertisers’ sales forces.

My copies of those great Albany Life advertisements are so old, they are saved as 35mm slides (remember them?). I do hope that over the next few months I can replace them (or at least supplement them) with some new material. If there’s anyone out there – manufacturer or distributor – who shares that aspiration, we’d love to hear from you.