Best Financial Services Social Media Campaign

At least one-third of Americans have not started saving for retirement. Especially for Millennials, it is a common belief that planning for retirement is too complicated or too far away to prioritize. As a way to combat this inertia, The Principal Financial Group with its agency partners TBWA and Prometheus encouraged consumers to take the first and easiest step to retirement – visualizing it – and in doing so created a campaign that would stimulate social sharing and buzz.

In this first-of-its-kind campaign, The Principal put out a rallying cry for consumers to start their retirement planning by sharing their vision of retirement using the hashtag #SeeYourRetirement via Social Media channels. As an inducement for people to share, we selected the strongest retirement visions and created custom drawings, bringing to life in a visual medium those retirement visions. Those custom drawings were pushed back out to consumers in the Social medium in which they were received with the request to share with their Social networks.

The true success of the campaign was evident in the two-way conversation between the consumers and The Principal, with over 20,000 retirement visions shared! The campaign saw a 53% increase in Social SOV and a 40% increase in positive social sentiment, despite significantly higher competitive spending. Additionally, Principal saw a 65% combined increase in Facebook and Twitter followers during a short six-week flight. According to Twitter, “Essentially, The Principal exceeded what they paid for by 8+ million impressions, crushing Twitter’s impression benchmark for the trend!”.

Contributors:

Chief Marketing Officer, Principal Financial Group:	Beth Brady
Director - Advertising, Principal Financial Group:	John Derbick
Assistant Director - Advertising, Principal Financial Group:	Michelle Swanson
Sr. Advertising Manager, Principal Financial Group:	Chris Bofinger
Sr. Advertising Manager, Principal Financial Group:	Francie Peterson
Advertising Production Manager, Principal Financial Group:	Michael Scebold
Group Director, Prometheus:	Dyana Lyons
Global Account Director, TBWA\Chiat\Day, Los Angeles:	Jennifer Nottoli
Creative Director, TBWA\Chiat\Day, Los Angeles:	Jason Karley
Creative Director, TBWA\Chiat\Day, Los Angeles:	Mickey Coyne

PRINCIPAL FINANCIAL GROUP

Location: United States