The key challenge for this campaign was to make the long-term appealing: help people appreciate the importance of investing long-term for better outcomes, especially in an environment focused on short-term rewards.
The primary goal was to shift attitudes – to help mass-affluent Chinese investors understand that investing is about more than achieving a number, but can increase their sense of financial well-being and help invest for the future.
The campaign focused on the following metrics:
The strategy was built from four research elements, allowing BlackRock to subvert traditional forms of investor research and build an experience that engaged people during a key moment for reflection: Chinese New Year.
Part A
Part B
Part C
Part D
A. Explore investor attitudes
A proprietary survey of 2,193 people in China identified that investing provides powerful emotional benefits that underpin all aspects of well-being. The most important observation was that investors in China are 32% more likely to have a higher level of well-being compared to non-investors: demonstrating that when people invest for their future they create a greater sense of well-being today.
B. Explore relationships with topics
Social media listening demonstrated that investors weren’t yet connecting their financial health to their well-being, and were more likely to associate it with physical health, happiness and quality of life.
C. Define emotional drivers
BlackRock used findings from the research in Part A and previous focus groups in Shanghai in March 2018 to identify emotional drivers.
D. Validate findings and creative
Our agency partner Edelman tested the work with an online survey of 750 mass-affluent Chinese people. Findings validated the conclusions that family, social status, and anxiety are issues. The survey also provided a creative angle: inspirational stories about self-made people who plan well and live happy lives would be well received by target audiences.
Creative
The creative aimed to inspire people to invest by demonstrating that not only can you achieve your personal goals through investing, you will also benefit from an increased feeling of well-being.
Edelman created a catchy term in Chinese that roughly translates to “well-being yield” or “happiness index”, highlighting the link between wealth and well-being by showing that when you invest you get an additional return in the form of increased happiness and well-being.
BlackRock built an interactive WeChat H5 experience that immersed viewers in an interactive story. Viewers could play through the story and engage with a quiz that provided them with a personalised and shareable Chinese character that described their own “well-being yield”.
The story was brought to life through four distinct personas, drawn from research and designed to resonate with the target. Each story demonstrated how the personas were able to reach their financial goals, and the ‘unexpected’ benefit of well-being they gained through investing.
Inspired by the Chinese New Year tradition of sharing a Chinese character symbolic of the year ahead, Edelman created nine custom characters by combining existing characters, such as 淡 and 定 or 底 and 气. Audiences took a brief quiz to generate a character to define an element of well-being which could inspire their financial planning.
The primary goal of this campaign was to get mass-affluent mainland Chinese investors engaging with educational investor content. The campaign focused on the following metrics:
3) Reach and readership - indicator of awareness
Result: KOL content was viewed 280,488 times. Previous top performing content received 1,500 views on BlackRock’s WeChat.
