After a string of separate competitive pitches, ASX-listed investment management firm Challenger has appointed Match Media and J. Walter Thompson to handle its $10 million account.
It's the first time the business, which manages more than $60.4 billion in assets, is splitting the media and creative duties between two specialist agencies.
This is the first win for Match since the acquisition by Publicis announced last month.
Stuart Barton, general manager corporate and consumer marketing and communications at Challenger, admitted the business has a “customer targeting problem” that makes mass communication necessary, but potentially more wasteful than other general financial categories like banking and insurance.
“On our journey to transition from a B2B to a B2C financial brand, we initially went with a one-stop-shop and have been served very well by 303Lowe since 2010,” Barton said.
“But this year we decided to take a risk on fresh pairs of eyes, so we put our entire account out to pitch. J. Walter Thompson’s strategic nous and gold creative work impressed us enormously while Match brought an analytical rigour and commitment to excellence that we feel is unrivalled among media agencies.”
CEO of Match John Preston said: “One of the key values of Match and Blue 449 is collaboration and an open source approach to business relationships.
“We are looking forward to working side-by-side with the Challenger marketing team and J. Walter Thompson.”
ZenithOptimedia revealed news global media network, Blue 449, in March this year. It's designed to be a more nimble challenger brand within the Publicis stable.
The Match acquisition marked the launch of ZenithOptimedia's Blue 449 network in Australia and the Match acquisition is described as “the vanguard” of its expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.
Preston went onto say that Challenger is a great business with complex communications objectives and that Match looks forward to the “intellectual challenge” of working in a heavily regulated category as well as providing analytics on the interplay between the end user and the role of the financial advisor in the customer journey.
In the saving phase of superannuation, Challenger’s investment products help build wealth. In the spending phase of retirement it helps convert this wealth into “safe and reliable income streams in the form of innovative annuities”.
Barton added: “You don’t need to know about annuities until you’re in your 50s and thinking about retirement. You might only design your retirement plan once, take a long time to choose your investments, only buy one annuity in your lifetime and it’s usually based on the recommendation of a financial adviser,” Barton, said.
“Against that backdrop we needed to rethink our communications partners.”
J. Walter Thompson Sydney general manager Jenny Willits said Challenger has disrupted the financial services category and effectively written the textbook on transforming from a B2B to B2C brand. “We look forward to helping write the next chapter,” she said.
The appointments are effective immediately.
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