What Shipped: Issue 15, 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:

1. Moving people from apathy to action
   Moving from a transactional role in our members lives to transformational.
2. Learning From The Future
   Using scenario planning to get a wider view of where our brand risk lies.
3. TikTok
   We dipped our toes (and our advertising dollars) into the world of TikTok.

Moving people from apathy to action

Moving from a transactional role in our members lives to transformational. What’s it going to take?

Why are we checking in on our brand strategy?

Strategy is an informed opinion on how to win. We review the strategy when we’ve won or we’ve gotten new information. We’ve got a lot of new information in the last few months, notably:

• Restructure — this affects how we work with other parts of the business and communicate the power of member’s money on the future
• Growth — we continue to grow at **quite** a clip. How do we harness this? How do we keep it up? How do we accelerate our growth?
• Market shifts — big super funds continue to edge into more sustainable investments. We have to continue to differentiate ourselves as the market turns towards ESG investments.

My learning: Because we’re growing so fast, in an industry that’s changing fast, it might be helpful to do strategy check-ins on a quarterly rhythm. In the last few months, we 1) bedded down our brand strategy, 2) a rhythm for introducing new creative platforms and testing ads on them, and done a LOT of testing and talking to people.

So, what’s all that testing taught us?

• People don’t know how to talk about super as a lever of power. We often get this feedback when we ask people for NPS surveys. Example: “I really believe in what you guys are doing, but super is not really a hot topic of conversation in my friend groups. Otherwise, I would select a 10.”
• We’re making strides in building a member experience that helps people use and realise the power of their money even after they join. The breakup letter and impact wrapped tests have been good forays into moving beyond the join.
• Talking about power > talking about climate guilt or carbon counting. Putting this power through frames of reference they understand (the power of a big multinational or a well-known politician) drives this point home well for them.
• People have a healthy dose of skepticism and are actively looking for points of differentiation between funds. They’re aware of greenwashing.
• We have a hecticly high level of engagement — how do we build on, and harness that? Anecdotally, we hear members refer their friends to us. Banking and financial services are one of the least trusted.

The fun bit — where do we want to go?

Our brand strategy is that we use the power of money to shape the future. But what does that look like in terms of stories we tell, experiences we build, and initiatives we get involved in? To map this out, i mapped out:

• People’s mental state as they move through the journey (zero awareness of power => changemaker)
• Status quo + implications of how we should behave to deliver on the strategy
• The commitment curve, or the experiences we want to design to build people’s commitment to Future Super and our shared mission

This is just a starting tool for conversation right now, but it’s helping us shape conversations about our priorities.

What are the implications of this strategy?

If we’re building people towards action, we’ll…

• Build engagement even over doubling down on new platforms. This means if we have a choice between introducing a new platform to advertise on or building an experience that brings our members closer to us / increases their ability to refer us, we prioritise building engagement experiences.
• Teach members how to talk about the power of money. Just getting them in the door isn’t enough — helping get members comfortable. Example: connecting
• Hero members who are action-oriented changemakers. Spotlight our ideal members and find ways to support them and recognise them for what they’re doing. Example: connecting gung-ho members who can speak about the power of money to interviews with journos
• Prioritise action-oriented activations and partnerships through the lens of the power of money — not the broader climate movement. Example: we do sign climate act now because as a business our name lends weight to bill that would legislate climate targets. We don’t sign up to sponsor every sustainability initiative; we use our money to build partnerships
• Wrap “impact” into the frame of the power of money. Talking about impact isn’t a separate comms stream. Shaping the future is our impact.

These implications are just a start but, getting out of theory and into practice is where they rubber meets the road so things should get interesting! Stay tuned.

‑ Amanda

Scenario planning for creatives

Using multiple futures to understand our brand risk

Companies normally fail because they can’t see or adapt to change, even when it’s hitting them over the head. Kodak doubled down on film when digital cameras were already on the market. Blockbuster chilled while Netflix changed how people consume movies. Barnes and Noble thought people would definitely be loyal while Amazon offered cheaper prices and a faster experience.

One of the reasons these companies don’t act is because for years and years they’ve only been able to see one version of the future. When that doesn’t pan out, they get stuck being stunned.

There is a process that’s used in the corporate world that aims to reduce the likelihood a company dies from this perilous disease. It’s called scenario planning. Until this week I was a never-tried-it, never-want-to naysayer (I’m so open minded sometimes). The process felt like one of those things that was useful as an idea but never really cut the mustard to help teams in reality.

Never say never: Recently I’ve challenged myself with documenting more of our brand risk. In getting started I realised I needed to be able to see what other futures might exist. So I enlisted some help and pulled my Corporate-Jargon-Hating self along for the ride.

Scenario planning for creatives

I decided to book a 60 minute scenario planning session to help expand my thinking on what the future might hold. I knew that others might be as skeptical of scenario planning as I was so I had to make it different, evocative and useful.

TL;DR: I prepared three scenarios prior to the meeting which painted futures where the world had changed SIGNIFICANTLY. In one scenario, there was a single world order, in another we were living on Mars. I asked everyone to imagine we were in 2030 and living in this reality. Then we brainstormed how we might respond to this world as a brand. Here’s what we came up with.

Reactions

After the session I asked the team how they found it so I could refine and learn for the next scenario planning I do.

And Mariela + Amanda:

Self retro

What worked

1. I was more skeptical of this session than anyone else. That helped push me to make it worthwhile but also a good reminder not to get in my own way so much that it halts progress.
2. These 60 minutes expanded my view of our brand risk more than hundreds of other chats I’ve had about it. Brand risk becomes interesting to me when I’m thinking in decades, not years.
3. By hearing everyone’s input, I could see principles and behaviours I want to lay out, instead of just key messages and single future solutions.

What didn’t

• No visuals on scenarios made them less engrossing. I’ll be leaning on sci-fi, movies and other creative references to make these future visions feel more plausible, even if they’re unlikely.
• I’ll widen out the team since being in marketing / comms wasn’t a prerequisite to having this discussion. I’ll be searching for people with strong imagination, who are curious about our work and willing to give things a go with little information.

‑ Grace

TikTok, more like TikBlock

Our foray into TikTok advertising has not been smooth sailing.

With more than 2.5 million Australians now on TikTok, including approximately half of our team, we thought it was time to try out advertising on it.

Good news

• We’ve got some ads that have been killing it on Facebook. Ads that you’d think would naturally lend themselves to TikTok, like this one.
• We are getting quite a lot of clicks through to our website, at a comparable Cost Per Click (CPC) as our best ads on Facebook.

Bad news

• We’ve been consistently blocked by TikTok’s approval team for a myriad of reasons from being too political, being a ‘get rich quick scheme’ (lol..), and even because “The ad features excessive visible skin of a female. This could include excessively exposed breast or cleavage.” The below fully clothed women were the only people in that
  ad. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

• The few ads that have made it through TikTok’s wild approval’s process, while getting a lot of clicks, haven’t resulted in people joining Future Super yet. This is most likely because the targeting options are so limited, compared to Facebook where we can precisely target the exact groups of people that are most likely to join.

Conclusion: It’s been a challenging start on TikTok but we’ve seen enough positive signs to keep going with it. We’re also keen to try out some more bespoke ideas we came up with in a session last week. Watch this space!

‑ Andrew