10 September 2012
Back to news homeVoting is now live for the winner of NEST’s ‘Tomorrow is worth saving for’ competition. Members of the public have a week to cast their votes on the top three creative ideas consumers came up with for making pension saving more relevant to people’s lives.
With less than a month to go before millions of people begin to be automatically enrolled into a pension at work for the first time, the competition is part of an effort to ensure consumers are aware of their new rights and understand what the changes will mean to them.
The competition, which ran on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest during June and July, asked members of the public to come up with snappy headlines and images that illustrate what makes their tomorrow worth saving for. People were asked to think about the things they enjoy doing today, such as going to the cinema or going out with friends, that they will still want to do when they retire.
Three finalists were short-listed from nearly 200 entries to the competition. Lucy Richards, 40 from St Albans, Lynne Newton, 45 from Durham and Lucie Carayon, 39 from London are now in the running to see their ideas come to life in print.
The winning advert will appear in national newspapers to celebrate the start of automatic enrolment and the role NEST will play in the new pension landscape.
Commenting on the competition, CEO of NEST Tim Jones said:
‘We recently carried out some research that, unsurprisingly, found people are still going out with friends, going for romantic weekends and even playing in bands when they retire. It’s not just young people who want to have fun in life, although they might think that!
‘Millions of working people are about to be brought into pension saving for the first time. We are very proud to be playing a central part in helping them take care of life’s basics as well as life’s treats into old age. This competition was designed to celebrate our role in automatic enrolment as well as encourage everyone to think about why tomorrow is worth saving for.
‘We’ve been delighted with the quality of the entries, which all managed to present pensions in an uplifting way. It was very hard to choose our three finalists so I’m glad it’s over to the public now to decide the winner.’
Notes to editor:
About the ‘Tomorrow is worth saving for’ competition:
• NEST launched a national campaign called 'Tomorrow is worth saving for' in June 2012. Via social media, it asked consumers, 'what do you do now that you will still want to do when you're older? Going to the cinema, socialising with friends, going to the football?' Consumers were invited to enter a competition to come up with advert ideas representing what they think would make ‘tomorrow worth saving for’.
• In total nearly 200 ideas were submitted to the competition. The campaign attracted more than 3,000 interactions with NEST’s social media profiles and was seen by over 35,000 people on Facebook alone.
• The ideas submitted were whittled down to a top ten by NEST employees, and then a shortlist of three was judged by a panel including NEST Chief Executive Tim Jones and Jeff Prestridge, Personal Finance Editor of the Mail on Sunday.
• NEST is now asking consumers to vote for their favourite – the winning ad will be placed in two national newspapers to herald the start of automatic enrolment.
Results from testing:
• To spark conversation and give people who entered the competition inspiration, NEST developed five ideas of our own for possible adverts, based on in-depth research with people who will benefit from automatic enrolment.
• As well as inviting feedback on these adverts from consumers taking part in the competition, we commissioned Populus to independently test them with a representative sample of the UK population.
• Around half (46 per cent) of respondents who saw the adverts said they made them feel more positive towards automatic enrolment and NEST, with just 6 per cent saying they made them feel more negative.
• A third (32 per cent) said the adverts made them think that they will still want the same lifestyle they have now when they retire and that they should ensure they can maintain their standard of living.
• A fifth (20 per cent) felt encouraged to save for the future.
Research behind the competition:
• Over the past few years NEST has conducted in-depth research with our target audience through quantitative surveys as well qualitative focus groups and in-depth interviews.
• This research suggested that while many people recognise they are not doing enough when it comes to pension saving, they do not respond well to scare tactics or being told they ought to be doing more. Constructive messages about what they can do to put the situation right and what they stand to gain work much better.
• People also struggle to project themselves into old age and to think about the future. The challenge is to bring messages about pension saving into their current working lives.
• This research has been condensed into eight Golden Rules for communicating about pensions and automatic enrolment, which can be downloaded here.
• Our campaign theme, ‘Tomorrow is worth saving for’, is one example of these rules in action.
More information on our campaign can be found on our social media sites:
www.facebook.com/nestpensions
www.twitter.com/nestpensions
www.pinterest.com/nestpensions