The Campaign

Let’s face it. An insurance agent is the enemy. He’s usually a middle-aged pot-bellied man with a combover and thick glasses, that occasionally accosts you and drags you to a cheap local café to talk about you dying. We needed to show you that an insurance agent is a person, not a corporate slave. One who knows your (twenty something year old) needs. Because, like you, he’s a twenty something that lives the same life as you.

Creative Execution

On her social platforms, up-and-coming starlet Rebecca Lim announced that she was retiring. That was the stunt. Social uproar ensued, with over 10,000 comments and posts and coverage on numerous traditional and digital news outlets gathered over just two days. After the weekend of debate, chatter, and at the peak of public interest, we launched our campaign. Our series of online ads were meant to capture our target audience at their daily internet activities: - For Google display network and YouTube in-stream ads, the targeting filters included travel, fashion and lifestyle. - Google search for conversion - Instagram ads for 15-24 target - Facebook Carousel ads and video ads on desktop and mobile with targeting was filtered based on interests. - We also held the world’s first Facebook LIVE panel discussion. It was an e-dialogue on retirement that crowd-sourced questions from Facebook’s audience.

Within the first weeks of Rebecca Lim’s retirement, NTUC Income saw a 300% increase in web traffic to several of their savings and retirement plans. FlexRetire, in particular, received the highest number of visitors and page views within the first 3 days of launch NTUC Income advisers also saw a 30% increase in customer enquiries about retirement plans within a week of launch. There were 25% more policies sold and the average annualized premium income per policy had increased by 126% as compared to the same period in 2015. Top for 2016 Q1 Awareness for people aged 21-29. This campaign had been dubbed on the internet as “The Best Marketing Stunt of 2016”

NTUC Income is downaging their audience, but youth seldom ever think of Insurance. Our motto is “Made Different” and everything we do must portray a forward-looking spirit. Start Retiring was a gutsy stunt. We got a young starlet, Rebecca Lim, to announce her “Retirement” at the peak of her career, on the cusp of an impending Star Award win. The timing was perfect as all eyes were on her. Almost all local media covered her retirement. Social was abuzz with over 10,000 comments and posts begging her to reconsider. 2 days later, we revealed that it was the start of a campaign for FlexRetire, a savings plan for youth in view of the future. The words “retirement” and “NTUC Income” were now synonymous, and web traffic increased threefold, with 30% of enquiries being about FlexRetire, translating into 25% higher sales. All thanks to a single retirement stunt.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

The youth couldn’t imagine themselves retiring. It was just too far away. With Singapore’s Star Awards upcoming, all eyes would be on the up-and-coming starlets. Young, beautiful, successful and at the peak of their pre-career (yes, we made that up), these are the people the youth wanted to be. Now, what if one of these starlets, one who happened to be nominated for the awards, we might add, were to suddenly throw in the towel and say, “I’m retiring”?