Send a message to the future

Background

Pension funds are a low interest subject. To be frank, they are BORING and it is often hard to get people engaged.

AMF, with its tagline ‘For the future’, wanted a new way of talking to their customers about tomorrow today.

Idea

The solution was to get people engaged in their own personal futures, interacting with friends and family by sending messages to them in future, messages which can’t be opened until the year 2030.

It was a fun and interesting way of getting people to project themselves into the future, planting the thought of what their lives would be like then,

300,000 local page visitors created millions of total contacts via text messages, private messages on Facebook and shared wall posts.

Results

The response rate was over 40% compared to a business average of 5-6%.

But those numbers are not necessarily relevant because this was more brand-building than a classic business response campaign.

Our Thoughts

Having worked with various insurance companies in the past, I know how difficult it is to get people to take notice of a product they only buy once a year. For the other 364 days, you are meaningless to them.

Try and show them what the future might look like and you fall easily into the trap of visual clichés – the sports car or the speedboat we are all supposed to be dreaming of. Or you creat rather absurd sci-fi landscapes with your characters dressed uncomfortably in aluminium kitchen roll.

Best to allow people to imagine the future for themselves, however hazy the vision may be. And that is exactly what Forsman & Bodenfors have done here.

One of the great agencies of the world tackling a difficult and prosaic subject in typically down-to-earth manner.