At the end of last year, we were thrilled to take to the stage at the iconic Marketing Week Masters ceremony to accept the award for Best use of Content for our ongoing campaign work with NOW: Pensions. The award celebrated NOW: Pensions underpensioned report and our accompanying comms campaign, which exposed the groups in society most likely to miss out on sufficient pension savings needed for later life. The celebrations offered both an opportunity to be inspired by other successful campaigns, and to reflect on the journey that we’ve been on together with NOW: Pensions over the past few years.
The campaign started back in 2020, when NOW: Pensions commissioned groundbreaking research revealing that women are retiring with just a third of the pension pot that men retire with. With barriers such as the need to earn over £10,000 a year to automatically enrol into a workplace pension paired with the pre-existing inequalities in the labour market, it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t just a gender issue, but an issue impacting many groups in society, from people with disabilities to multiple job holders right through to single mothers. This devastating reality spurred us into action, driving NOW: Pensions to launch their underpensioned report and The 10 Group to build a fully integrated campaign raising awareness of the underpensioned and lobbying the government for policy change.
To kick off the campaign, we launched a hero film on International Women’s Day explaining the issue of the gender pensions gap to young girls. The campaign film, big questions for little people (see below) highlighted the difference men and women experience in pension wealth through the simple visual of two jars of sweets, one full and the other with a third of the amount.
The film marked the beginning of a drumbeat of communications activity and content, with individual PR campaigns developed across a 24 month period deep diving into each underpensioned group and shining a light on the need for change at policy level. Supported by content including a filmed interview with the pensions minister Guy Opperman, a webinar with model and activist Daisy Lowe and series of partnership activity with Glamour, our ambition was to simplify the complex world of pensions and create cut through with the broad audience needed to spark change.
The result? A series of news stories regularly reaching national press, TV and radio, almost 5 million social impressions and a reach of almost a billion. The campaign went on to see NOW: Pensions present two policies to HM Revenue and the minister for pensions, who has since committed to implement changes to get a further 2.5 million people into pension saving by 2025.
Being part of a campaign which is helping drive such important positive change has been both eye opening and a real reminder of the tangible power that storytelling can have. And an even greater opportunity to pause, reflect, and celebrate all that we’ve achieved together over the past two years.
