About Alexforbes
After their momentous rebrand in early 2022, Alexforbes established itself as a financial partner to people from all generations and walks of life. What sets Alexforbes apart is its ability to provide excellent customer insights, while offering tried-and-tested advice to make meaningful financial impacts in any South African’s life. To reach a younger audience with financial messaging that offers value, Alexforbes wanted to test the waters where the youth of South Africa are hanging out online.
The Challenge
To build a marketing campaign for the youth of South Africa that effectively positions Alexforbes as relevant to this audience by drawing on the brand attributes of Insight, Advice, and Impact.
Key Insights
South Africans struggle with saving and often end up in debt, with only 6% estimated to be able to afford a comfortable retirement at age 65.
The millennial market, financially inexperienced and confused about managing finances, is the target audience for the campaign. With limited resources and a lack of disposable income, saving for the future is difficult for this audience, who may be paying off student loans and working their first job.
Our younger generations face financial struggles, especially in a weakening economy and global pandemic. Closing the retirement savings gap is crucial amid changing circumstances and regulations.
And so, The Struggle is Real campaign was born. It is a relevant and highly topical conversation that Alexforbes could contribute to with practical financial insights and advice.
Our Role
Digitlab suggested leveraging the Alexforbes slogan (Insight. Advice. Impact) as the cornerstone of this marketing campaign. The goals we set for this campaign were three-fold:
- To drive awareness around financial literacy among young South Africans (Insights)
- To educate young South Africans on useful financial tactics to help them save more (Advice)
- To continue these important conversations around impactful financial decisions on the Alexforbes My Money Matters website (Impact)
As lead creative and paid media partners to Alexforbes, we stepped in with a carefully crafted strategy that leveraged an integrated blend of rich media to get the message across. Our creative team considered a multi-media approach the ideal way to reach the intended audiences.
Our Solution
We tackled two main topics: saving money and managing debt. Instagram and Facebook were the platforms chosen to share content aimed at a younger Alexforbes audience.
1. Awareness around financial literacy among young South Africans
Instagram and Facebook were used to share content targeting a younger audience of Alexforbes. The content focused on saving and debt management and was presented freshly and appealingly to attract younger millennials and Generation Z, who are starting to think about their financial futures.
2. Education on useful financial tactics
Creative elements were shared as Reels and Stories on Facebook and Instagram. The content consisted of a 60-second intro video and two 30-second videos that shared helpful financial advice and directed audiences to the My Money Matters website for more information.
The campaign’s tone was designed to be creative, using the brand’s design, music, and writing styles to give it personality and make the topic more engaging. The motion design and transitions presented information in a bite-sized and mobile-friendly format. At the same time, the energetic pace of the videos helped make the potentially stressful topic more approachable for a younger audience.
3. Continuing the conversation around impactful financial decisions
The poll feature was used on Stories to interactively engage audiences and gain insights into their financial knowledge, habits, and aspirations. Questions included emergency savings, money goals, and acceptable reasons for going into debt. Opportunities to click through to the website and dive deeper were made available in content to continue the conversation at mymoneymatters.alexforbes.com.
The campaign demonstrated Alexforbes’ ability to adapt communication formats to reach a broader cultural cross-section.
Execution
Below are examples of the content that was created as part of Alexforbes’ The Struggle is Real campaign:
Stories and Polls:
Instagram Reels:
Instagram Reels
The Results
The main metric measured in this campaign was awareness, and great results were realised in this regard across both paid and organic promotion.