“Grime and pensions – they don’t get mentioned in the same sentence,” rapper and Bafta-award winning TV chef Big Zuu beamed in his first interview to promote the pensions industry’s new Pay Your Pension Some Attention campaign.

In case it somehow passed you by, this unexpected collaboration arose from the industry’s recognition that more should be done to address the fact that savers’ confidence and understanding of their pension remains too low.

Over half the public struggle to find their pension information and only 20 per cent are confident they are saving enough for retirement.

With the backing of 13 of the best-known brands in the pensions industry, we concluded that traditional approaches had only limited success, and what was needed was a bold new strategy.

We gave Big Zuu 24 hours to compose a track urging listeners to ‘Pay Your Pension Some Attention’, and, with a brash red, yellow and black colour scheme, sought to use a combination of digital and social media channels, out of home and display ads on billboards, websites and in newspapers to bring the catchy song to a new audience.

Signs of success

The initial reaction we received was very positive. Most people we spoke to recognised the playful humour, uniqueness and energy of the approach.

Headlines about the rising cost of living had put the nation in a bleak mood, but we were determined to be positive about the simple things people could do to get their heads around how their pension worked.

And the early signs are that the campaign has had some broad success that is worthy of some celebration.

Big Zuu reached millions of people via TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and millions more via the video billboards at train stations across the UK, not to mention the national newspaper and broadcast coverage earned from our novel collaboration including with the BBC, ITV News, The Times and Financial Times. Zuu has been an energetic and enthusiastic ambassador, especially in sharing his personal experience with engaging with his pension for the first time.

In a campaign awareness survey of members of the public after the engagement season, 19 per cent of respondents said they could recall seeing the campaign – a very strong figure for a campaign of this scale.

Of those, a staggering 91 per cent took action as a result, saying they either spoke about pensions, looked for additional information or engaged with their own pension after seeing it. Extrapolating that out, a potential 3 million savers were inspired to go and pay their pension some attention as a direct result of the campaign.

There is good evidence in the analytics that by coming together under a single, brand-agnostic umbrella to promote a single, simple and memorable message, we demonstrated the power of collective action when it comes to increasing engagement.

We successfully showed savers that learning pensions basics is easy and with small steps, like updating personal details, they can gain confidence in their pension saving.

Lessons for future campaigns

The campaign team is already looking to the next iteration and has identified areas where we can have an even bigger impact or do things a bit differently.

For starters, the campaign met an enormous amount of misfortune with the launch day PR activity halted on the sad news of the passing of Her Majesty the Queen. Activity was not restarted again until after the mourning period.

There was also political turmoil, with a change in Prime Minister and a double change in Pensions Minister during the engagement season acting as a huge distraction.

Turning to the things we can control; we recognise that it takes time to build a brand.

Future efforts will therefore likely continue with the Pay Your Pension Some Attention brand and slogan. We will also give the industry more material and campaign assets to share through their own channels to widen the reach and breadth of activity.

We will also be looking for additional organisations to join as sponsors of the campaign.

Those involved from the PLSA and the Association of British Insurers (ABI) have been immensely proud to work on this project; the first of its kind to bring the industry together, and are already looking forward to the first creative meeting of 2023.

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