Background
I was asked by a marketing agency to write a complete thematic retirement campaign for their client Janus Henderson. In the past, their content has been marketed to investors much further down the sales funnel, but this time they wanted an awareness level campaign for people thinking about financial planning for their retirement.
Solution
The agency had no creative director at the time, which meant I was able to take the lead in recommending a single-minded creative idea to stand out from the competition and all the other online noise. This was once standard practice in advertising, but for various reasons has largely fallen by the wayside. (It’s the main reason why so many ads these days are boring and similar.) My idea was to take a well known phrase for a milestone birthday- ‘The Big 5-0’ – and change it in an eye-catching, memorable and relevant way. As ‘The Big 5-Oh!” it represented the sudden realisation that this was an age when you really needed to knuckle down and start saving for retirement.
The strength of this single-minded idea was that it was able to work effectively as a video (with a proper shoot and actors, it was essentially a TV commercial). But it was also capable of showcasing a whole campaign, including press ads, a microsite and articles.
Results
Within six months of the launch, Janus Henderson smash far past the figures for any previous initiatives. The hero video received over one million impressions, with a click-through rate 280% above target. The print element was similarly outstanding, delivering over three million views. On the microsite, there were over 2,000 page views a month, with average time on the site over four minutes – again, far exceeding expectations. A good creative idea really does make a massive difference.
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