Australian Retirement Trust (ART), the country’s second largest superannuation fund, has credited its business boom to a big blue monster.
‘Awaken Your Super’, created by M&C Saatchi and Bohemia, aims to challenge the perception that superannuation isn't as active, interesting or relevant as other financial assets.
ART’s chief member experience officer Simonne Burnett said people are struggling to visualise their retirement with the nation facing some of the toughest economic conditions in a generation.
“We're talking about superannuation which is really far away money for a lot of people,” she told AdNews.
“The inspiration for the creative came from the insight that Australians really do have their head in the sand when it comes to super. They almost think about it as different money and therefore don't pay as much attention to it.
“It's really about encouraging and empowering Australians, and our members, to pay more attention to their super for the betterment of their future.”
ART has reported a 60% increase in new customer applications and increased engagement from existing customers since the campaign launched in April last year.
Burnett said the big blue monster, Artie, a visual metaphor for untapped potential, was designed to appeal to all age groups.
“The metaphor of a monster is about depicting superannuation as something tangible, but also something big, that if you look after, it can look after you and get bigger,” she said.
“It is a bold statement, and we think it's probably a bit bolder than others might make, but it has to be to really disrupt and encourage people to think differently about their super.
ART deployed a multi-channel strategy across TV, digital, social media and OOH.
Burnett said M&C Saatchi, who won the account following a competitive pitch in 2023, were tasked to create a campaign which would become ingrained in people's minds.
“Superannuation is a hard category to get a strong return on your marketing investment because people don't pay attention to it, so the brief was always about capturing attention,” she said.
“M&C Saatchi presented two ideas and I really clearly remember them saying, ‘You've got the blue pill or the red pill’.
“The red pill was a bit safer and the blue pill really pushed the boat out. The blue pill was ‘Awaken Your Super’ and it's what we ultimately took to market.”
The campaign had 2.9 times the ad attention and brand consideration impact compared to the superannuation category average.
However, Burnett revealed that the board and CEO weren't initially onboard with using a monster as the brand's mascot.
“This idea of depicting superannuation as a monster wasn't something that was easy to get our heads around,” she said.
“What we did do, which was a very important part of us being able to gain the confidence of our board and CEO, was quite extensive research on the effectiveness of the campaign prior to going live.”
ART teamed up with specialist brand and communications insights agency Luma Research who analysed the ad using four metrics.
Burnett said ART benchmarked ‘Awaken Your Super’ against two other campaigns.
“It came back in the top 20% of all the financial services ads that Luma had in their database,” she said.
“That was what gave us the confidence that this specific creative idea was the one that was actually resonating, so not taking our own view, but taking the view of the market that we were trying to appeal to.”
Burnett said ART's key marketing priorities for this year are continuing the brand platform and encouraging more Australians to actively engage with their super.
“We're going to continue the ‘Awaken Your Super’ platform with Artie and we're going to be learning much more into social media,” she said.
“We're going to focus on social activities to engage with people where they are.
“Nobody's going to do anything these days unless it's incredibly easy.”
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