Creative Strategy > Strategy & Effectiveness: Sectors
MANULIFE (INTERNATIONAL), Hong Kong / MANULIFE / 2022
Overview
Credits
Why is this work relevant for Strategy & Effectiveness?
Manulife’s campaign is a lifeboat for Hong Kongers after two years of pandemic and socio-political unrest. A collective sense of insecurity made them long for full financial control and freedom and being Hong Kong’s top 10 insurance companies, Manulife has the foresight and bandwidth to keep abreast of such trends and evolve. With strong cultural relevance, the campaign is a streamlined strategy drawn from extensive data insights to promulgate ONE idea, that everyone should have the freedom to choose WHEN and HOW to retire, creating not only record-breaking campaign results but also a long-lasting brand building benefit.
Background
Manulife Hong Kong, the 125-age old Canadian-headquartered insurance company, is one for the top 3 insurance companies in the market, and their standing in retirement management has been in the top spot (Ref: Info Deck p.2).
After witnessing the city going through months of political and social unrest and then hit by the pandemic, Manulife wanted to relaunch their retirement solutions.
Objectives as follows:
- Create new campaign that would resonate with the targeted customers, understanding the market sentiment has changed dramatically due to the mental fatigue caused by the political unrest situation as well as the pandemic crisis.
- Generate new business sales & grow market share of the Retirement & Wealth category
- Retain no. 1 position in brand consideration
- Sustain brand image as the “retirement expert”
The Interpretation of the Challenge
Key challenges:
- Lower budget, High competition: Manulife’s ad spend is very small compared to our competitors. Ranked #10 in ad spending (Ref: Info Deck p.3)
- People in crisis mode. Little or no mind space to think about retirement during a crisis, not only because of the rising health concern from the pandemic, but a lot of people actively planning for migration due to political dispute. Just 1H 2021, almost 90,000 people left, marking the city's biggest population decrease in 60 years.
- HKers are known for making fast high-risk investment. In a financial and political uncertain future, who would be interested in giving their money to a retirement plan from an insurance company, which locking your money for years and yields low returns.
- Low growth opportunity of retirement products. Demand for retirement products is low as Hong Kongers prioritize on critical illness products. (Ref: Info Deck p.4)
The Insight / Breakthrough Thinking
A comprehensive process that involved:
1) Data: CCS – Agency owned research, YouGov, Research proprietary owned by Manulife and social listening
2) Competitive monitoring: Identify untapped opportunities
3) Journey mapping: Media tool unveiled relevant moments
4) Qualitative interviews: Deep dive to uncover insights
What came through was clear but heart-breaking. People in one of the world’s richest cities with the freest economy, feel the complete lack of control and freedom, impacted from combined crisis.
Some people losing their jobs, some migrating, meant early retirement by force, not by choice. For those who stayed, experienced a taster of retirement from WFH during the crisis, again, freedom taken away from them.
We saw this as an opportunity and led to the driving insight of when you aren’t in control (of financial security), you lose the freedom of choice (retirement).
With a well-prepared plan, you can choose WHEN and HOW to retire.
The Creative Idea
The idea: YOUR Choice of Retirement.
If financially prepared, you retire whenever and however you want. When prepared, you can retire early. If you find yourself in a position where you don’t need to work, you can still choose to work. Money frees you and having a good retirement plan from Manulife offers that freedom.
Executed by the destined guardians, we use a deliberate humour to lighten up the mood for the city. Them overseeing individual’s progress on retirement is also a façade of Manulife’s role. An easy-to-understand storytelling approach entices the audiences to instantly feel entertained but also rethink retirement. The mentors acted by two refreshing celebrities representing two age groups, both owning strong communities to secure audiences from our targeted demographics.
The campaign channel and content were mapped according to the consumer journey from awareness to consideration to purchase intent. Fully integrated from O2O.
The Outcome / Results
Business:
- Sales (APE) grew +43% post campaign [Oct 2021 vs July 2021]
- Champions the market share at 20.8% (Q3 2021)
- Marketing ROI on campaign targeted products is 707%
- Total New Premium YoY growth at +90% (vs 2020)
Brand:
- Prompted Ad awareness +42%, brand consideration +16%, purchase intent +24%, brand impression +19%
- Secured no. 1 brand consideration position, reinforced the leading retirement expert
- The highest positive sentiment captured during campaign period (Aug to Nov) (Ref: Info Deck p.5)
- MARKET WIN BOOSTER: As only the #10 ad spender, Manulife remained #1 on “Most Satisfied Brand in HK” and “Most Recommended Brand in HK”, conducted by The BrandIndex Insurance Hong Kong survey end of year
Please tell us what effect the work had on the chosen market.
Hong Kong’s insurance consumers are often ruled by fear and worries, especially because of those serious and alarming propagandas, so adopting a light-hearted storytelling approach on retirement planning is never seen.
By observing and analysing the sentimental value, we saw an obvious uplift in mood from mass consumers and readers when talking about the concept and intention of the campaign, reflected quantitatively in Manulife's sentiment survey (Ref: Info Deck p.5), and it lasted longer as a topic across different online channels compared to previous ones.
Also, the campaign realised Manulife’s strong share of voice, so it will become A BENCHMARK for both the brand and Hong Kong’s market. The narrative “Insurance talks can be enjoyable and inspiring” will only further assimilate to become one of the key brand identities for Manulife, gradually shifting away from the usually cold and boring image of insurance business.
Please explain if there were any other discounting factors that may have impacted on the effectiveness of your work.
Hong Kong currently has a celebrity crave for the super boy brand MIRROR, one of them being our actor. At first glance, it might be just another celebrity commercial riding on the current wave, aiming to just attract the most eyeballs and likes on social media. Despite understanding the phenomenon and knowingly selected the celebrity as our intern, we pulled a heart string on demonstrating the intention behind, outstanding the concept rather than the celebrity himself.
However, we are still aware of the fact that there will be unavoidably diversified first impressions on the commercial including from those die-hard fans and celebrity haters.
Please tell us about the long term strategic planning
To a large extent, the campaign is a taster for the market on how insurance can be and where retirement will be headed, so knowingly for Manulife, it is a long-haul process to educate and assimilate the message to local communities. The campaign deliberately ignited conversations across all social media and advertising touch points and funnel them to Manulife’s website, where the site sits as the info centre and plays the most critical role to sustain and evolve the discussion after the campaign. The ad concepts, including “mentoring”, “digitalised solutions”, “guardians”, are also deliberately placed to paint a long-term vision and brand positioning of Manulife to becoming the solution focused, insight driven and personalised partner for consumers who want to plan a carefree and enjoyable life ahead.
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