Spirit Super’s Start Strong campaign targets young apprentices via humorous first job moments.
The campaign highlights the need for young people to focus less on mistakes and more on the things they can control — like their super.
About 170,000 Australians start an apprenticeship or traineeship each year. They are young, the majority of them (70%), are under the age of 25, and in most cases, they are not yet financially literate or are unlikely to care about super or their retirement.
The campaign portrays a young woman, new to the workforce, ending a phone call with a charming, “I love you”. The mishap is quickly vindicated with the phrase: “At least you got your super right“, leaving the frazzled young lady at ease knowing she’s taken care of in the long run.
AdNews spoke with Common Ventures creative director, Brian Merrifield, along with creatives, Masha Rimsh and Thomas Barker to unpack the campaign.
Creative, Masha Rimsh says the goal of the work was to drive memberships amongst the younger generation of workers.
Rimsh: “The initial goal of the campaign was to drive new memberships with young apprentices and trainees. We knew our audience weren’t the sharpest tools in the financial literacy shed, and were unlikely to care about super or their retirement. To make our campaign resonate, it needed to be entertaining.
“Based on these memories and the insight, we landed on the platform line ‘Start Strong’. It’s kind of like a pat on the back for young apprentices, who are currently going through these moments.”
Fellow creative Thomas Barker says that the task was simple, to help apprentices and trainees to understand that the most important thing to get right when entering the workforce is their choice of superannuation.
Barker: “Our task was to get apprentices and trainees to understand that the most important thing to get right on their first day of work is their choice of superannuation. The campaign concept all started with the insight that first jobs are full of mistakes and, at the time, it can feel like the world is ending.
“I made nothing but mistakes at my first job at a small-town bakery. I’ll never forget one time when I accidentally left the freezers off overnight, causing a meat pie meltdown the next day.”
Creative director Brian Merrifield: “Superannuation advertising is a sea of sameness, all promising better returns for a more secure future. But that all goes out the window when your target audience's care factor is zero, when it comes to retirement or financial planning.
“First-day mistakes? We’ve all had them, which made it a rich territory for us to explore. I still recall my first day in ad-land as a designer, meeting my office buddy while trying to say hello with a mouth full of coffee and spilling it all over myself.
“When it came to thinking about tradies, apprentices and office workers, there were so many potential stories out there. The trick was making sure they were relatable in a positive way. When it came to brainstorming first-day pranks, we wanted to make sure anything we did was inclusive and not derisive."
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