Wachovia uses an innovative approach to promote retirement planning
Baby Boomers are notorious procrastinators. When it comes to retirement planning, they are more like grasshoppers than ants, content to play rather than sock away the cash they will need for their fast-approaching golden years.
Financial services giant Wachovia Corporation wanted to help boomers of all ages avoid future shock — namely the realization that their retirement savings would not support their lifestyle. So, Wachovia planned an integrated, multi-faceted campaign called “What’s Your Number?” designed to educate individuals in the 35- to 64-year-old age group about the realities of retirement planning, as well as relevant Wachovia services.
“Research shows many Americans are not ready for retirement,” says Anja Watson, project manager for the “What’s Your Number?” program for Wachovia, which manages $553.6 billion in assets from its headquarters in Charlotte, N.C.
A Financial Fitness survey, conducted by Richard Day Research on behalf of Wachovia, revealed that roughly 13 percent of respondents believe they’ll likely never retire, and nearly 14 percent expected to retire at age 70 or later. What’s more, only 9 percent have a detailed retirement plan, and 32 percent of those ages 60 to 64 haven’t even started a retirement plan.
The failure to plan for retirement certainly doesn’t stem from a shortage of information. Financial data abound, accessible to anyone willing to seek them out — on the Internet or from financial services professionals. As Watson saw it, Wachovia’s challenge was to differentiate itself — in a big way — from existing information and service providers.
“Americans have more than enough financial information out there,” says Watson. “But nobody had ever taken the opportunity to educate customers face to face.” So, she and her team developed the “What’s Your Number?” program to do just that — deliver retirement planning information to consumers in a palatable and easy-to-swallow format through a series of educational seminars.
STARTING IN SARASOTA
Wachovia’s agency, Mullen Advertising, had previously raised the idea of having Wachovia team up with Time Inc. to hold in-person financial seminars in different locations. Watson liked the idea of working with Time Inc., which publishes high profile business and financial planning magazines. The idea was to have magazine editors from the Time family host free educational sessions covering topics such as “Daily Money Management.”
The program would include sessions that featured local experts, such as real-estate brokers, builders, and small business and women’s business gurus, depending on the theme of that particular presentation. The idea was to balance nationally known authorities with local expertise, according to Watson. “We made an effort to bring national speakers,” she says. “But we also wanted to show that we know exactly what’s going on in Sarasota by adding local speakers to the panel discussions.”
In addition, Wachovia would make available online financial planning tools, such as an interactive retirement-planning calculator and a retirement fitness quiz, along with information about consulting with a Wachovia financial advisor in person or on the phone.
The team had evaluated several possible pilot locations for the program but quickly settled on Sarasota. With a mix of snowbird retirees and young year-round resident families, Sarasota had a sufficiently broad range of potential attendees to try out a number of different types of informational seminars, according to Watson. Plus, Wachovia had another strength: a solid local sales team already in place there.
There was one more important reason that Sarasota made sense: the ability to measure program results. “It’s a small enough market that it could be contained,” says Watson, meaning that measuring results would be relatively manageable. The city’s size also made media coverage fairly easy. “It’s not a large metropolitan area,” she says, so the company could easily and inexpensively wage a media blitz. “We used TV, newspapers, magazines, radio, billboards, online and direct mail.”
The program had a soft launch in April 2006 with a real estate-investing seminar. The big kickoff took place the next month with a forum on financial planning for retirement by a panel of nationally known experts. The event featured big-name speakers, including best-selling author Lee Eisenberg, author of the recent financial-planning bestseller The Number.
