Hard-edged ads aimed at luring retirees to annuities
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday February 25, 2011
EMOTIONAL vignettes of retirees who have lost their savings in the financial crisis are the basis of an ad campaign highlighting the risks of investing heavily in the sharemarket. The aggressive campaign by Challenger is aimed at luring retirees to invest in annuities and is certain to aggravate its competitors.The ads, believed to be the first to promote annuities, tell the story of four older people, either retired or soon to retire. One woman soberly says that the last thing she expected to be doing at her age was going back to work, while a man laments that he will no longer be able to afford annual trips up north to see family.The soundtrack to the ads is the baby boomer hit, For What it's Worth by Buffalo Springfield.Annuities are a fixed-return product aimed primarily at retirees. Clients' funds are invested in a range of areas including government debt and infrastructure. Normally the exposure to the sharemarket is minimal - about 5 to 10 per cent, compared with super funds, which are typically comprised of about 70 per cent shares.Challenger's head of corporate marketing and communications, Stuart Barton, said it had not set out to be negative or to run a scare campaign, but was trying to balance the overwhelmingly positive messages about investing in shares. "The main goal is to provide balance to the discussion. When it comes to investment products, particularly anything related to the sharemarket, it's always 'talk about the potential returns'. You never hear anyone discuss that if you get a high rate of return you should also expect more risk of volatility," he said.Mr Barton said Australia had a "love affair with shares" but people were not always realistic about the boom-and-bust cycle involved.Any ad campaign aimed at selling a lesser-known financial product was always going to be difficult and the company says the campaign brief was a challenge.Mr Barton said that the company had not previously focused on advertising direct to consumers because their products were normally sold through advisers. The need to build the business and the general climate of insecurity around investment following the global financial crisis had prompted Challenger to develop the ad campaign."The communications challenge is a really big one because we're a relatively unknown financial brand specialising in a largely unknown financial product, competing against household names in banking and finance," he said.The national ad campaign, titled "Real Stories", recently began running on free-to-air and subscription television, cinema, radio, print and online this week.A spokeswoman for Colonial First State, a key competitor to Challenger, declined to comment on the ad campaign. Another Challenger competitor, BT Financial Group, did not return calls.
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald