The Impact of Credibility: On Retirement Savings

The "modern era" joint history of FleishmanHillard Café and OTP Pension Fund began in 2014. Modern, because we had previously worked with OTP Private Pension Fund as well, but that's a separate story. A decade ago, we sat at the table with a sector player in a difficult situation who was concerned but open to new solutions. The sector, and within it the largest player, OTP Pension Fund, was hindered by several factors:

• Public uncertainty: A few years after the private pension fund reforms, potential clients, and even existing fund members, were uncertain about the sector's future.
• Market uncertainty and lack of information: Among other factors, precisely due to public uncertainty, the number of new entrants continuously decreased between 2008 and 2014. In 2014, OTP Pension Fund's membership grew by just over 5,000 new members.
• Aging client base: As one of the oldest funds, OTP Pension Fund also had one of the highest average ages, which could pose long-term challenges.

From the beginning of our collaboration, it was clear that these challenges could only be solved long-term, strategically, and not through individual campaigns. It also quickly became apparent that the familiar messages repeated for years would not bring breakthrough results.

Business Objectives: Increase the number of new entrants and encourage contributions.

Communication Objectives:

• Strengthen OTP Pension Fund as a stable, expert market player
• Demonstrate the necessity of pension fund contributions and make their benefits tangible

How?

Working with the pension fund's leadership, based on business results and research, we quickly identified a key insight: one of the main obstacles to starting pension savings is that workers, especially young workers, live in a cognitive bias trap. They believe their current physical condition will persist in the future, so they don't need to save because they'll continue working alongside their pension. However, this comes at the cost of sacrificing a happy retirement. Therefore, our communication aimed to continuously demonstrate that achieving a happy retirement requires taking the first steps with OTP Pension Fund from a young age.

Tools

Over the years, we employed numerous tools to achieve our goal. Our first collaboration was the "Happy Retiree" campaign, where we showed that successful self-care is like long-distance running - with many small steps, even the biggest goals can be achieved. Additionally, we created several award-winning campaigns at both domestic and international levels, such as "You Can't Work Forever," which contributed to a 60% increase in new entrants during the campaign period and a 10% increase in contribution amounts, winning the SABRE Awards and European Excellence Awards, among others.

The Pension Mentor program specifically targeted young workers, and thanks to this initiative, for the first time in the fund's history, the average age of new entrants dropped below 40. This campaign also succeeded in both domestic and international competitions. The "No More Excuses" campaign, implemented during Covid and specifically serving online entry and trust building, also brought outstanding results not only in stabilizing existing membership but also in growth. At the end of 2023, staying with the strategy conceived in 2014, we created the "Be Part of Your Own Retirement" campaign specifically to reach employers, where we encouraged employers to support their employees' retirement savings with the help of partners and role models.

Results

Over the years, we realized hundreds of appearances and millions of reach, ensuring that OTP Pension Fund became one of the most prominent players and experts in the retirement savings market in both visibility and opinion. This communication helped the fund so that neither the war conflict nor Covid and the uncertainty following these events could shake the membership.

We are proud that as partners, we contributed to:

• Doubling the number of new entrants in the first year of our collaboration
• OTP Pension Fund being the only market player to increase its membership every year
• 21% membership growth between 2014 and 2023, far above the market average
• Maintaining over 10,000 new entrants annually throughout this period
• 25% increase in the proportion of respondents who either have or plan to establish retirement savings, according to the OTP Self-Care Index

The secret to success was balanced, continuous, credible expert communication based on a unified strategy that responded to clients' real problems, supported by the market's best experts.

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