Scottish Widows’ Robert Cochran and financial journalist Iona Bain explored social media’s impact on pension engagement and the success of the Pay Your Pension Some Attention campaign.
Robert Cochran, workplace savings engagement and innovation specialist at Scottish Widows, said a video of him running up the stairs talking about pension awareness had so far gained over two million views.
Cochran said Scottish Widows had made the decision to engage with social media influencers, seeking to counter misinformation about saving and investing on the platform. TikTok allows users to create, edit and upload short video clips.
“Previously the pension industry wouldn’t engage with TikTok,” Cochran said. “Now we have embraced it and it is opening up new avenues.”
He said Scottish Widows had approached influencers and made sure it had created a brief of content that gave them facts and included positive messaging. “They then take that information to their audience in their style,” he explained.
Scottish Widows social media account has clocked up 72 million impressions so far, added Cochran, by “getting content creators to put credible content”.
Iona Bain, founder of the Young Money blog and one of the faces of the Pay Your Pension Some Attention campaign, told delegates she believed there was a shift among companies leaving a social campaign up to an influencer.
“There is a trend towards companies understanding that they have to do more in house,” Bain said, adding that she felt the current influencer model bubble was bursting.
“One day [influencers] are telling you to put money into a pension and the next trying to sell you perfume. This does not come across as credible,” she said.
Both Bain and Cochran believe the introduction of pensions dashboards could help empower younger people. “Let’s make them easy – they can’t come soon enough,” said Bain.
Pension awareness campaign
Bain and Cochran told the conference that the Pension Attention project’s use of celebrity Gemma Collins in its most recent campaign had been divisive but both believed it had made a difference.
“Everyone I’ve spoken to has said it got them interested,” said Bain, whose involvement in the campaign is as a financial expert answering Collins’ questions in a series of videos.
Cochran said: “We have played that video to younger people, one said it was overall very good but that the reality TV nearly put them off.
“We are taking the core of this stuff to find other ways to build on it and create interest.”
Bain added: “It was fantastic to see Hello magazine and The Sun wanting access to Gemma Collins and having to mention pensions at the same time.
“You are getting people interested in pensions and imagining how their retirement might be. We need to work with that enthusiasm and build on it.”
