Aegon Pension Ace

An example of engagement that resonates is the Pensions Calculator created for Aegon.

Aegon were looking for a means of highlighting the importance of a setting up a pension and in particular to leverage their sponsorship of British Tennis and promote this to their target audience.

They needed something engaging, subtle and memorable. Standard pension calculators are exactly that, calculators. They are common enough in many forms and used so frequently in so many applications that none stick in your mind. We may use them occasionally to see how much you need to save for a pension, feel a bit worried but shortly thereafter you forget about it and move on to more immediate concerns.

Aegon needed a Pension Calculator that was quick and easy to use, was associated with Aegon, and would be memorable enough to encourage users to talk to Aegon about their Pension.

So we turned the traditional Calculator on its head. We associated it with tennis and called it Pension Ace, totally removing the word “calculator” it suddenly looked more like a game and much more interesting.

We decided to skip the part where users need to enter reams of personal information, something that they don’t always wish to share too readily. Instead we created a carousel of different people that matched our target audience’s profiles, we inserted their age, annual incomes and average monthly pension contributions, etc. Users simply selected the profile that reflected their circumstances most closely. We then asked them to prepare for their first serve by selecting their desired pension income by using a simple sliding bar.

Once selected we went into an animated serve with either a female or male character depending on who they selected in their profile. The player bounces the ball and serves, as the ball flies over the net and hits the ground we switch to the Hawk Eye ….

The Hawk Eye shows the ball bouncing just inside the line, marking its spot, this is calculated using their desired pension income selected just before the serve.

The Hawk Eye then expands out to show where their current savings are going to take them, usually it’s quite far from where their ball landed.

Pension Ace takes users into their second serve where they get to adjust their monthly pension contributions to see if they can reach their desired pension income. Again a simple sliding bar allows them to raise their contributions. We then move into the second animated serve and switch to the Hawk Eye but this time you can see that by raising your contributions you have closed the gap between your desired pension income and the actual income by simply raising your contributions.

The end screen then shows a summary of your serves using Hawk Eye images and includes a best possible scenario for a third image and here we include a gentle call to action for users to seek more information or contact Aegon for pension advice.

The above example demonstrates how to take a conservative financial institution and make it more engaging in a way that resonates with the target audience.

We break out of the conservative nature of finance but not crazily so. We enhance trust and relationships, while building brand awareness with content that engages people. We create a memorable experience that gets our target audience thinking about their pensions and encourages them to discuss this with Aegon resulting in higher sales, retention and profitability.

Success

Launched at the British Tennis championships, Pension Ace was installed on large screen TV’s as well as being available online. Hundreds of people engaged with it at the championships on the touch screen TVs and thousands more online enjoyed a gamified pension experience that made them think more on their pensions and favourably towards Aegon.