Objectives

In the run up to the Presidential election we heard from thousands of clients voicing concern about the potential impact of the election on the financial markets and their portfolios. They sought Vanguard's perspective on what actions they should take in order to protect their nest eggs. Vanguard's research has shown that the best strategy for long-term investment success stems from tuning out short-term noise and market volatility, resisting the temptation to react to the news of the moment in favor of maintaining a long-term focus -- in other words, staying the course. Additionally, our research has shown that our financial markets are non-partisan, performing similarly regardless of which party is in office.

We wanted to remind of clients of this investment philosophy, helping them to resist the temptation to react to short-term market noise that was swirling around them.

Strategy and Execution

As investor anxiety reached its peak on the day of the election, we sought to communicate Vanguard's investment philosophy in a succinct but memorable way. We wanted to remind them to keep their eyes on their long-term investment goals and to not be distracted by the short-term noise that threatened to overwhelm.

Importantly, we wanted to communicate this in a way that was simple to understand and eminently sharable. This latter point was particularly important because we traditionally do not have a large budget to promote our content – we spent only $30 to promote our Keep Calm post.

Results

By any measure our Keep Calm post was our most successful of the year, if not of all time. This campaign blew away our average content in impressions, engagement, reach, reaction and shares. Both these metrics and the dozens of comments from followers thanking us for this perspective demonstrated that this content had the intended effect of reaching our audience at the right time, with the right message, providing a gentle reminder to remain focused on their long-term investment goals.

Media