Creative thinking that adds up

The Brief

We’ve worked with MSD for a couple of years now to create awareness of the SuperGold card and to turn this awareness into behaviour change – making the card part of the everyday shopping habits of Kiwis over 65. An innovative approach to the 2022 campaign saw us take some big steps forward towards this goal.

Based on extensive research undertaken by MSD we had a clear understanding of how our audience feels about the card and its benefits, including the barriers and potential motivators for using it more often.

The Solution

With these deep audience insights, we developed a long term vision to foster a proud card-carrying community, fuelled by the notion of belonging to a valued over 65’s club. Included in this thinking was a short-term roadmap that built the perceived value in the card, beyond the small savings that could be made at each store.

The single-minded idea ‘the savings add up’ was designed to show that the cumulative value of using your card every day is significant over a month or year. This level of savings provides options, a greater sense of freedom and control for our audience, and allows them to do the things they enjoy most in retirement. It is also a theme that allows us to celebrate retiree lifestyles, the variety of places savings are available – online and off – and to make the card the catalyst for habit-forming change.

Our desire to make using your card look fun, energetic and rewarding – coupled with the need for a safe approach to filming during COVID-19 – led us to recommend a mixed-medium video that combined real footage and animated illustration. The conscious decision was to make people and the SuperGold card the only real elements in a “Who framed Roger Rabbit?’ style creative execution.

Our story outline and detailed storyboard allowed us to engage two specialist partners, creating a true three way creative collaboration. Our illustration and animation partner brought our creative concept alive, detailing the scenes and how real and animated worlds co-existed. Our videography partner captured the talent in front of the green screen, always mindful of how they would seamlessly interact with animated objects and the environment.

This approach needed an agile collaborative working arrangement, utilising the skills and experience of the different parties to try new things and to make quick decisions based on what worked in practice. Furthermore, it also saw the client play a more engaged role in signing off creative elements along the way, rather than just a finished product. 

The overall colour choice is informed by the SuperGold brand palette but is further enhanced to make the gold colour pop, building more equity into it and the card. Active decisions in selecting youthful-looking retirees, an energetic voice over, live action sound-effects, animated type and an uplifting music track, further add to the overall positive tone of the video.

Beyond the video, we developed a number of print, social and digital executions that built on the video creative to reinforce the core message of value adding up.  

The Results

The feedback has been extremely positive from the client, from retailers and also from the audiences we are looking to engage. The general consensus is that this fresh approach speaks to audience motivators, directly addresses perceived barriers to using the card and positively illustrates the value the card delivers. And the reach data is well on track with the long-term marketing strategy, with social media feedback affirming that the 'value adds up' messaging is resonating well with our audience.