Retirement: a big creative challenge and opportunity
Two different agencies on two different continents take vastly different, but worthy creative approaches for clients Prudential and MLC
For years, insurance and investment companies, eager to get their hands on your hard earned savings ran some pretty innocuous advertising. Sure, there was benchmark work like John Hancock’s original “Real Life, Real Answers,” campaign from Hill, Holiday in 1984 (a great year for advertising), or Fallon’s “Make a Plan” for Prudential in the the days when Bill Westbrook helmed the shop. But typically retirement advertising has relied on the classic stereotypical images and promises: the inn on the coast of Maine, the vintage Porsche convertible, and other empty promises.
The last two years, however, have seen some more impressive efforts. For client MLC, Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne created a museum exhibit that showed all those previously relied on scenarios as endangered.
This TV spot, Save Retirement, turns the expected image into an unexpected execution. (Though the dialog could have been better, perhaps asking what people in retirement do today? We all know that answer.)
There’s also a retirement exhibit in the form of a digital museum. Not sure it works as well as the TV spot, but at least it acknowledges the false claims and expectations and offers easy access to facts and information about how long your money might last.
For me, however, Droga5's work for Prudential deserves the highest praise. The agency developed social, shareable work that both educates and inspires. And they used the ideal formula: do something, invite participation that generates content, document the event, make the content shareable, call attention to it with advertising.
This case study video for the Longevity (Stickers) Experiment tells the entire story. It may not be as stunning a commercial as MLC’s, but the story is certainly as attention-worthy.
The Prudential website, I might live how long, also strikes me as a stronger and more engaging way to inform and educate. And the companion Day One and Second Chapter content, telling the personal stories of regular people as they enter retirement works better, too.
Both campaigns exceed the pathetic efforts that once characterized the category.
