How Now: Pensions helped to drive change and close the pension gap

Despite pensions being critical to people in their later life, many are not saving enough for their retirement. To help get to the root of the problem pension provider Now: Pensions commissioned research into the gender pension gap, which discovered some groups were reaching retirement age with just 15% of the pension wealth of the UK average. It coined these the ‘underpensioned’.

The Underpensioned Report found common factors within these groups which were presenting barriers to saving, including non-traditional work patterns, a lower percentage of home ownership and being affected by inequalities in the labour market. These people were less likely to have a higher-paying job with opportunities for career development, meaning they were less likely to be eligible for automatic enrolment in the UK.

The company had initially planned to launch the report in March 2020 and host in-person events, but the pandemic forced it to change course. It developed a hyper-targeted campaign, which went live on International Women’s Day 2020, culminating in the launch of report at the end of the year.

The company also launched the Fair Pensions for All website, which provided research, perspectives and policy proposals on tackling the UK pensions gap, as well as housing a seven-part video campaign exploring the challenges each individual group faced.

Adding to this, Now: Pensions then filmed an interview with the pensions minister Guy Opperman and secured support from a range of organisations and charities including Debate Mate, Carers UK, Disability Rights UK and Gingerbread, as well as Glamour magazine and activist and model Daisy Lowe.

Now: Pensions exceeded all objectives set, with 183 pieces of coverage (a 186% over-delivery), 11 of which were national (83% over-delivery), 36 pieces of trade coverage (500% over-delivery), 127 pieces of online coverage (154% over-delivery) and nine broadcast interviews (a 350% over delivery).

The campaign as a whole generated 4.7 million social media impressions across owned and partnership content, an 840% increase on KPIs.

Now: Pensions then went on to present two policies to HM Revenue and the minister for pensions. If introduced, these policies would generate an additional £1.2bn in annual pension contributions and see an extra 2.5 million people access a workplace pension.

For this reason, Now: Pensions was awarded the Marketing Week Masters 2021 prize for Content.