The Campaign

We went back the brand’s foundation, to the deep sense of empathy that had inspired the brand’s long standing promise of ‘always listening, always understanding’. With this lens, we could see that Prudential was operating in a society that was facing new kinds of pressures. Pervasive personal technologies, long working hours combined with anxiety for the future placed a new level of stress on personal relationships. Even the Prudential CEO felt that workplace relationships in the company were suffering. Inspired by American research psychologist Arthur Aron’s ground breaking experiment on developing intimacy between strangers; we developed the ‘Relationship Reconnect’ platform. We used this experiment to bring Singaporeans together and the resulting films provoked people of Singapore to reassess their relationship and strengthen their emotional bonds with people that matter most. We used a relevant social tension and the brand’s voice to help people reconnect. 146 words of 150 word limit used.

Creative Execution

The hero film was uploaded on the brand’s Youtube and Facebook pages and hosted on a campaign microsite - PrudentialReconnect.com.sg. A series of buses, OOH media placements and targeted digital advertising directed people to the campaign microsite where they could watch the films and explore additional video and written content regarding relationships including an interview with the consulting psychologist, and Prudential’s own CEO explaining why we are conducting the ‘relationship reconnect’ experiments. Concentrated effort was made on PR to generate awareness of the initiative. Video ad networks and programmatic placements on top sites ensured everybody in Singapore saw the videos. To keep the campaign fresh, different thumbnail images were used to appeal to specific set of target audience. Local celebrities, influencers and bloggers organically picked up the video and shared it on their pages. The 8 weeks campaign was produced with less than USD 1 million media budget.

The films evoked a response far beyond our imagination. Singaporeans recognized the need to reconnect. Thousands left comments on the videos tagging their friends and families to spend more time with each other. Our Financial consultants saw a different behavioural change when meeting clients – their perception towards their family members had changed and their willingness to talk to our financial consultants had gone up. Employees felt a sense of pride in the organization and the film was shared all across the world with people wanting to connect better with their friends and families. For an addressable target audience of 3.3 million Singaporeans, the campaign results were overwhelming: 18 million+ views 380,000+ shares 160,000+ likes 32,000 positive comments 26% expressed an intention to try it for themselves Top-of- mind awareness +28% Unaided awareness +13% Brand communication awareness +41% Willingness to talk to a Prudential agent +51%

Despite its market leading status, Prudential Singapore's total top-of-mind awareness of the brand had slipped 50% over the past 3 years and advertising awareness had dropped by half, worsened by new competitors entering the market, including aggressive industry disrupters. Moreover, the entire category faced declining consumer confidence reflecting a growing sense of disconnect between the people of Singapore and the traditional story telling based marketing model used to sustain them. This campaign re-establishes Prudential's position by breaking conventions with a digital centric strategy, connecting directly with its audience with online content based on a 4 minute experiment.

We believe that any change we are trying to drive should start within. An organizations culture needed to change before we could change the way Singaporeans connected. So we decided to build the brand ‘inside out’ by starting with our FC's and employees. All 5000 of them. . So we got our staff and financial consultants to go through the experiment and launched the new brand initiative at a town hall event, helping everyone to personally feel the Prudential difference. Our financial consultants and employees became brand advocates. Next, we recruited ‘ordinary’ couples in Singapore. With each pair, as with Prudential’s staff, we asked them to stare into each other’s eyes for four-minutes and recorded their feelings afterwards. Each of these experiments were documented as films with a thought provoking CTA “Your relationships are precious, protect them.”, which connected the social experiment with the brand and its business.