What Shipped: Issue 11, 2020
Future Super is a superannuation fund that helps people use the power of their money to build a future worth retiring into. We’re building our product and brand in-house and documenting what we learn in the process.
Here’s what we’ve been up to in the past few weeks:
- Brand Strategy - This fortnight was reflection in the form of conferences and campaigns. We reflected on the Fund Our Future campaign and looked to what’s next for the world.
- Copywriting - Find out why we’re thinking of information like pie. We’re checking our fast test-and-learn approach with some thorough copy auditing to make sure our messaging has teeth.
- Design - Are we stressing people out with our brand nakedness? Learn how we’re faring with our decision to not have a logo.
- Product design + brand - See how we’re stress testing bold style on conservative touchpoints. We’re working on matching the fast pace of our brand development with the more detailed product surfaces we’re creating in tandem.
- Team development - Get fresh insights into how we construct safe team, brave work as a team mantra from the ground up.
Brand Strategy
The folks at Mentally Friendly invited us to speak at a conference on designing public services for the new world we operate in. We also reflected on the Fund our Future campaign from April, and what we learned.
Listening to speakers from government, public broadcasting networks and service designers was a salient reminder that: no one has the answers. It was also a good chance to reflect on how we make decisions at Future Super and how to use purpose to bring others into brainstorms, how to look after each other (and our members) in crisis, and how to exercise our purpose-led decision making muscle.
A few screengrabs of what we spoke about: What changed overnight? What does the new world look like? What does purpose do for an organisation? And, how ‘right and wrong’ answers don’t exist in a complex world.
My very favourite bit though was listening to a voice note from Mariela reflecting on “how do we speak as a brand in a time of extreme disruption” — it was this reflection that catalysed us examining our role in the world. It the kind of honesty that only happens when you allow people to be human in the workplace, and it ultimately led us to speak up about the early access to super policy, and the decision to pass our government subsidy on to members who were forced to pull money out through early access.
I’m so proud to work with a team that thinks deeply about what we do, how we serve people, and how we can think creatively about delivering that service and saying something meaningful in the process.
Want beautifully captured notes and screengrabs from all the Mentally Friendly talks? They’re here.
— Amanda
Copywriting
We got some feedback in website usability testing that our site needed a little more bite. People were hungry for better copy.
Nearly 2 months ago we pushed our new website into the deep end to see if it would float. The old one was sinking anyway, so it was worth the risk. But the devil’s in the details and people noticed in our usability testing. It was time to do a comprehensive copy audit to see what we weren’t nailing.
Design quirks aside, the overarching problem is the way we’re talking about what we do.
It’s generic as all get out. What we’re saying is true, but other funds are saying the same stuff (and quite frankly we’re nothing like other super funds). There’s not a huge amount of burden in our industry to prove claims like “building a better future”, so we need to be wading into waters that other funds can’t follow is into.
There are two actions I identified that we can take to improve the way we’re telling our story and communicating our value.
Don’t say it better. Say it different.
First, we need to start saying things only we can say.
Case in point: we’ve started A-B testing a simple headline change on our home page. One of our ad headlines was outperforming on a consistent basis. Our hypothesis: It was showing our difference and it would work on the home page too.
The results came in fast. When we made ourselves undeniably unique (no other super fund is trying to shake the status quo), we got people staying on our site longer and converting better (we’re working on making that second stat statistically significant). All from a headline change. Imagine what that means for the rest of the site.
Deep Cuts
The second thing we need is to give people reasons to believe what we’re saying.
Think of information like a slice of pie. Your big value statement is your crust, holding everything together. But without the filling it’s dry and no one’s going to bite. We need to provide information that shows we’re living out our crust. Information that gets pointier and pointier until our visitors know that we’re sharing everything.
We had purposefully scaled back the information available on the site. Years of unmanaged information had piled up and it was, without a doubt, overwhelming to first time visitors. In our culling we probably stripped away too much.
But we’re now presented with an opportunity to plate up information with new transparency and clarity of messaging.
As an example:
What if I tell you that we screen out companies based on ethics?
A fair question might be: whose ethics?
So I tell you in no uncertain terms that one of those ethics is zero tolerance for fossil fuel exposure.
Ok… How do you know it’s not all talk?
I show you a real company, like Westpac, that doesn’t pass that specific screen. I give you detailed information on why they failed our screening.
That’s pretty honest. How does that translate into what Future Super does?
I tell you the exact action we take once we’ve determined this failure (not investing, engaging with the company or divesting). Now you know exactly how we respond based on ethics and specific context.
At the moment we stop communicating at the first or second rung of that hypothetical conversation. But we do the work at Future Super to talk about it all, so we need to get better at sharing that with people.
That way, when we make a claim — we substantiate it with delicious information pie.
— Jake
Design
We’ve been grappling with our “no logo” logo concept.
“Can you send me the logo?”
A common and justified question, that I’ve recently been meeting with (what I can only imagine is) a frustrating and bewildering response.
“Sure, but how do you want to use it?”
We’ve had a lot of discussions like this the last couple of weeks. Our no logo approach has led to some awesome debates, but it feels like we’ve landed in a good place.
The conventions of having an all important logo usually come at the cost of content or the message. Make the logo look good first, and worry about the message after. It’s freeing to not be beholden to clear space and minimum sizes, and instead let the brand name become a larger part of the brand expression. Yes, we usually need future super somewhere on the page, but context and message come first. Feel like shouting at someone? Write it in caps across the page. Need to appeal to the conservatives amongst us? Lowercase. Top corner. Easy on the eyes.
It’s different, but you still know it’s us. Take these letterheads. Not the pinnacle of brand expressions, but you can see the concept at work.
Besides, how many super company logos can you think of? Aside from that cupped hands number that’s been jammed down our throats with the repetitive aggression of a Daft Punk banger, I can’t think of one.
We could come up with a ridiculous hand sign too, delivered ceremoniously a generic retired couple, but that’s not for us. We show up naked (in the stripped back brand sense), but with meaning and intent front of mind. An intent that actions and words speak louder than logos.
— Nick
Product design + brand
We’re feeding our latest visual brand developments back into product.
Our visual identity is evolving at a breakneck pace, running laps around digital product projects that will soon see the light of day. It’d be a shame to slow (or even stop) that evolution just to decide a button colour or headline font treatment.
But how should we be making those necessary product interface decisions?
We don’t know. But we’ve come up with a good compromise using our value versus effort evaluation tool: taking the riskiest parts of our evolving visual identity and applying that to the most reserved or critical user interface elements. Think forms, labels, and fine print.
Is our primary typeface for marketing material, Sharp Grotesk, too wide or decorative for ‘serious’ UI? Is it underdressed for the party, or taking itself too seriously? How exactly does our visual identity flex for core elements versus expressive elements?
A lot of questions, a lot of visual tensions. Not a lot of answers… yet. Stay tuned.
— Danny
Team Development
We’ve booked in a second away day, we’re bonding more as a team and we’ve got some newbies stepping up to the plate.
Part of safe team, brave work is getting to know your team — what gives them energy and what saps it; how their lives affect their work and vice versa; and generally developing positive lines of communication.
Team happiness is a great metric of success (sadly lacking in most creative teams and marketing departments), and we’re finding it noticeably affects our outcomes. We were challenged by the pandemic shutdown, but in the last month we recommitted to connecting better as a team.
This week we started with a team hike through North Sydney. No work. Just a chance to muse on the world and on the things that excite us. It was refreshing for a Monday afternoon and a rare chance to reconnect in this time of remote working.
Next week, our second team away day.
If you’ve followed along, you’d know that our first team away day spawned this very publication. It was a chance for a green team to define where we wanted to head, how we wanted to get there, and what we wanted to achieve.
Since then the makeup of our team has changed fairly significantly. We added a gun product designer in Danny, a digital marketing specialist in Andrew (he’s good at lots of things actually), and we’ve been through a few designers now, with Nick the latest to jump on deck.
This away day is a chance for our current team to create shared views on our north star as a brand and what safe team, brave work means. And we’ll be doing it on the high seas, with Grace volunteering her new boat Fidra for a sailing expedition.
New people, new challenges
In typical fashion, sailing isn’t the only way Grace is pushing our team. Mariela and myself have both been thrown the task of conducting our first interviews next week.
We don’t overthink this sort of stuff though. Here’s some first time interviewer prep from Grace.
That’s all from us this fortnight. Until next time…
— Jake
