Eddy winners: Creativity trumps problems

From finding seeds for plants that would grow in the desert to figuring out how to reach new employees when the retirement plan is given only one page in a new-hire packet, winners of the 2010 Eddy Awards found creative ways to overcome obstacles and educate their employees about investing.

The winners were announced March 8 during Pensions & Investments' 18th annual East Coast Defined Contribution conference, held this year in Miami.

A complete list of winners, along with judges' comments and other stories and materials connected to the Eddy Awards and the conference, can be found on our website at www.pionline.com/dceast2010.

Officials at MGM Mirage — which took first place in special projects for corporate plans with more than 5,000 employees — needed the seed packets to help execute a “go green” theme for its DC plan education campaign, said Cindy Moehring, executive director, corporate benefits, for the Las Vegas-based company.

The litmus test? “I planted them in the backyard. They're coming up every year,” Ms. Moehring said.

Plan officials had another obstacle, too: “It was a really tough campaign for us to do because of compliance,” she said. Plan officials had chosen the tag line, “Save, Invest, Grow.” The folks in the compliance department, however, wanted to change “grow” to “nurture” because there is no guarantee participants' investments and account balances would grow.

Ms. Moehring said “grow” stayed in, but “we had to put the little star by grow to refer to the disclaimer” footnote.

The Hartford, MGM's service provider, assisted with the campaign.

At M.A. Mortenson Co., Minneapolis, which won first place in other media, “I'm in finance, and HR is a whole world of its own,” said Annette Grabow. manager of retirement benefits. “They (human resources) create the new-hire packet. ... All I get is one single page out of a whole book.”

She made the most of that page by creating Cabin Fever, an interactive CD-based game that was attached to a bright, colorful piece of cardboard that contained plan highlights, that went into the new-hire booklet.

“I wanted to come up with something you couldn't miss or ignore. ... These are mostly young engineers, right out of college, on their first real job. You don't know what kind of financial knowledge (they have). It was meant to be fun and interactive.”

Ms. Grabow hired goBIG Strategic Communications, Boulder, Colo., to produce Cabin Fever. “We had a riot brainstorming and writing,” she said

More importantly, she said, the game was effective, noting 78% of new hires played the game and 10% enrolled before automatic enrollment kicked in.

Officials at The Metropolitan Opera, New York, had yet another obstacle: “Our employees will never use a call center, they'll never go online. We have to use paper,” said Ann Marie Hackett, director, human resources.

The Met's brochure cover featured what Eddy judges termed “gorgeous” photos of the opera house's soaring arches. Met staff designed the cover internally.

“Everybody loves the arches,” Ms. Hackett said. Those photos also worked because “the Met is very, very strict about making sure ... the look and feel of any materials fit the look and feel of the Met,” she said.

Metropolitan Opera took second place among not-for-profits in the ongoing education category. Diversified Investment Advisors Inc. is the service provider.

In ongoing education for corporate plans, Ashley Furniture Industries Inc., Arcadia, Wis., won first place for companies with more than 5,000 employees. The service provider is Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement and Trust.

The rationale for undertaking the campaign sounds like it came from the expression, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Jeff Didelot, employee benefits manager for Ashley, explained that the plan, which has a profit-sharing component, was due to get a contribution in March, but the head of the company said in December, “I'm not going to give you this if people don't know what to do with the money.”

“We had three months,” Mr. Didelot said.

The result was a campaign with short and to-the-point pieces. “We realized we needed to explain the basics of investing — what is a stock, what is a bond — that retirement savings is a long-term investment, and then explain the profit-sharing contribution,” he said.

Plus, much of the work force is young, and had not experienced a down market, Mr. Didelot noted. “We didn't have people fleeing into cash or stable value. I think all in all, it was successful.”

County of Ventura, Calif., took first place for public funds in the special projects category for “Plan your happily ever after,” featuring fairy-tale characters such as the big bad wolf of inflation.

The campaign was designed for “National Save for Retirement Week” in October 2008. Then the markets and the economy tumbled, said Karen Becker, defined contribution program manager, “and we had to ask ourselves: "Did we still want to do this?'” she said.

“I can't tell my participants to stay the course if I'm not going to stay the course ... so we just went with it,” Ms. Becker said.

She said fund officials picked the concept because it has “widespread appeal. Everyone can relate to it.” The art work was done by Fidelity Investments, Ventura County's service provider, but Ms. Becker did the writing. “I loved that,” she said.

In the training and advocacy category, there was one plan sponsor winner: Omni Hotels & Resorts, Irving, Texas. The service provider is Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement and Trust.

Judges said they picked the Omni entry — with its theme, “How Much?” — because it was “creative, bold and eye-popping” and gave trainers fun but inexpensive giveaways such as spiral notebooks and buttons in the same pink and black used in the training materials for its EZ Enroll Program.

Cheryl A. Douglas, director of benefits, said the concept came from meetings with Wells Fargo officials and members of the “Omni Retirement Advisory Committee,” which is made up of volunteers from different hotels and winners from a previous enrollment contest.

When asked about any feedback she had gotten, Ms. Douglas shared an e-mail from Anthony Belef, director of human resources at the Omni Hotel San Diego: “We went though ideas one by one and ... came up with some very "delicious' and colorful themes that hit home with all our employees.”

Teamsters-UPS won second place for union plan conversions. Judges especially liked the strong identification with the plan sponsor, featuring silhouettes of UPS drivers at work and “financial safety” tips modeled on UPS safety tips given to drivers.

Deste Arthurton, DC plan manager at UPS in Atlanta, said the jointly trusteed fund's board was pleased with the design, which was done by Prudential Retirement, the plan's new record keeper. The silhouettes were chosen because “we don't use a lot of pictures ... Our work force is so huge and diverse, you don't want to leave any one out,” Ms. Arthurton said.

When asked if the project was successful, she said, “It was a very smooth conversion. I think the materials are clear and concise.”

In a separate set of awards to service providers for work they did for specific clients as well as for generic campaigns, ING, Institutional Plan Services won two first-place awards — initial education for corporate clients and communicating in a crisis for corporate clients — for work done for Nestle USA Inc.

Judges had noted that the cost to print and mail each initial-education kit was dramatically reduced, yet the information was still comprehensive and easy to read.

Scott Alexander, communications manager at ING in North Quincy, Mass., said Nestle officials were “on board with lowering the cost but didn't want to lose any of the information.

“We took a look at the old package — a brochure within a brochure, a large summary plan description — and we addressed redundancies, tightened white space and bound the (other) book into the (one) book, while getting rid of a pocket folder and an extra brochure.”

As for the communicating in a crisis entry, “every fall we plan the next year's communications campaign. In the fall of 2008, we knew that the start of '09 wasn't going to be business as usual ... that we had to address the elephant in the room,” Mr. Alexander said.

The result, he said, was a campaign that featured a “call to action,” with four quick tips and links to the website. “It set up the balance of the year's communications,” Mr. Alexander said.

The Hartford was the big winner among service providers, taking home 10 trophies for work its clients entered in the plan sponsor awards, as well as some The Hartford entered in the service provider awards. Second, with eight, was ING. Wells Fargo and Wachovia, which Wells had acquired, together won seven awards. Diversified Investment Advisors and The Principal Financial Group each won five.