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Singapore: NTUC Income gather insights into the Sandwich Generation with unbranded quizzes

By AAN team | 10 Jun 2020

Image from NTUC Income and Dentsu Aegis Network

Singapore composite insurer NTUC Income (Income) delved into a social media experiment with Dentsu Aegis Network's digital marketing agency, Happy Marketer, recently to engage with the country's Sandwich Generation online and see how financially prepared they are for retirement. The project took an unconventional approach - using a persona-driven, unbranded quiz to ask viewers whether their child was at risk of being the next Sandwich Generation.

After Income kick-started the Last Sandwich Generation campaign last year, they wanted to improve their understanding of the different kinds of people who make up the Sandwich Generation. Kah Min Teo, Director of Brand Storytelling, Happy Marketer, explained how they used social listening models to identify the personas that form the Sandwich Generation. “We started looking at their attitudes and behaviours,” he said. “Seeing that concern for their child’s future was the key sentiment behind their actions, Income and Happy Marketer decided to use that concern for good — to help parents find out whether their financial planning (or lack of it) would protect or expose their kids to the risk of being the next Sandwich Generation. That was the basis behind the Last Sandwich Generation quiz,”

The quiz contained 10 questions that asked the participant about their parenting habits, saving habits, and everyday routines, in a fun, conversational manner. The results would highlight whether the participant’s child was at high, medium, or low risk of being sandwiched. At the backend, these questions and results tied back to 3 key personas Income had identified from among the Sandwich Generation.

“The Last Sandwich Generation quiz was an unconventional way to relate to and engage with Singaporeans by helping them better understand their children’s “risk exposure” of being the next Sandwich Generation. It’s an interesting approach that draws attention as people are generally attracted to quizzes that reveal something more about them. Naturally, a quiz like this evokes honest responses too, making it useful as a tool to understand our personas’ concerns,” said Chloe Fair, Head of Brand Marketing, Income.

(Image from NTUC Income and Dentsu Aegis Network)

While branded or formal survey methods have been a tool of choice for consumer research, Kah Min pointed out that they are often too time and cost-intensive to keep up with constantly changing consumer attitudes towards brands and trends. “Formal survey methods also struggle to get honest responses, especially if the consumer feels like he’s out of his natural habitat and puts his guard up,” Kah Min explained. “On the other hand, unbranded quizzes tend to be “found” by people on information or engagement platforms that they are comfortable with, making them more likely to take the quiz and give genuine responses, and even talk to their friends about it”

The quiz was shared exclusively on third-party communities to ensure that the most genuine participation and responses were garnered. Community managers were also given the freedom to create quiz-related posts that appealed to their community’s content preferences. The final output ranged from arcade game-style videos, cartoon carousels, and challenges using characters from the quiz page to even a meme on financial mobility and retirement that nudged people to take the quiz.

(Image from NTUC Income and Dentsu Aegis Network)

The organic social media campaign reached over two million viewers and received more than 23,000 clicks to the website, and even led to increased bottom-of-the-funnel actions on the website. “By making a conscious effort to complete the quiz and gauge what the risk profile of their child was, we found that most people were then motivated to immediately address their situation by engaging further with Income. They read blog articles, checked out our promotions and sought financial consultations with our financial advisers,” Chloe highlighted.

Marcus Chew, Chief Marketing Officer, Income, pointed out the rationale behind the unbranded approach: “The persona-driven unbranded approach allows us to develop a wide range of experimental content that best connects with the audience, adopting a tonality and format that is native to each community, as opposed to a strongly branded collateral.”

Another benefit to this approach is the insights derived from both the audiences’ social media preferences as well as from the quiz. “It gives us ears on the ground — we’re actively listening to our consumers and monitoring their genuine responses, allowing us to tweak our messaging and offerings to better address their concerns and support their financial and insurance needs,” he added.

According to Marcus, the biggest win here has been the richness of insights. “We are learning more about our consumers’ concerns and thought processes — things that they may not even consciously know about themselves — which affect their consideration and purchase decisions. In fact, we've already utilised some of the insights gathered through The Last Sandwich Generation quiz to optimise some of our communications and services.”