Empower Retirement Uses 'Quirky' Videos to Engage Millennials

Empower Retirement is employing a new social media video campaign to provide Millennial retirement savers (those born during the 1980’s and early 1990’s) with an entertaining impetus to start saving for retirement if they haven’t done so, or to increase their retirement savings wherever possible.

The new awareness campaign tackles two false retirement planning narratives with new approaches. In a series of live action videos, Empower takes on some truly quirky, bad and perhaps not-so-serious retirement planning ideas. They include hoping to discover oil in one’s backyard, getting rich through a viral cat video or becoming a famous rock star.

A second set of videos uses animation to challenge the mindset that saving for retirement can be delayed because potential life events would make it unnecessary to do so. These include being devoured by a bear, abducted by aliens or marrying a rich and famous super model.

“It’s tough to think about planning for retirement when you’re young. Many things can happen between now and that distant future,” says Stephen Jenks, chief marketing officer for Empower Retirement. “We decided to directly take on this mindset with these fun scenarios that highlight some questionable reasons Millennials might give to explain why they’ve put off saving for retirement.”

“The light-hearted approaches to these topics are a way of appealing to an important audience in a fresh way that is consistent with how they take in information,” Jenks adds.

The videos will be rolled out through the company’s social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Empower will also use the videos in education campaigns for clients, many of whom have indicated that Millennial employees are more difficult to engage when it comes to the importance of investing for the future.