Personal touch is the key to help participants

Updated with correction.

Animation, humor and personalized messaging proved to be winning strategies for many of the 66 Eddy Award recipients honored March 9 in Orlando, Fla., for their retirement plan communications campaigns.

The winners announced at Pensions & Investments' 26th annual Eddy Awards were chosen from a near-record 175 entries, which competed in six categories: plan conversions, financial wellness, plan transitions, pre-retirement preparation, special projects and ongoing investment education.

"The winners stood out from the crowd for the creativity of their educational efforts in service of defined contribution plan participants, including targeting specific cohorts of participants and their families, " said P&I Editor Amy B. Resnick, who also served as one of 22 program judges.

This year's batch of winners distinguished themselves for diverse campaigns covering everything from "rainy day funds" to rollovers and required minimum distributions. Many employed multiple channels of communication to ensure that their campaign messages reached participants — no matter their age.

Many of the champions focused on financial wellness, a topic that plan sponsors and their service providers often approached in a light-hearted and personalized manner.

Southern Co., a first-place winner in the financial wellness category for corporate plans with more than 5,000 employees, for example, made financial wellness a family affair. The utility company and service provider Smith Communication Partners developed a "teaching kids about money" campaign that was pegged to a coloring book character called Jimmy, named after company founder James Mitchell.

Loaded with custom illustrations of power lines, lamps and light switches, the coloring book follows Jimmy as he learns about earning, spending, saving and investing.

In addition, the campaign featured other educational materials, including conversation cards for parents to engage their children, a piggy bank, an Instagram stories website and a Money 101 website for high school and college students.

"Most schools aren't teaching kids about finances and so a lot of that has to be done at the home," said Bob Beideman, Southern Co.'s Atlanta-based retirement director.

The goal of the campaign was "to create a future generation" financially savvier than previous generations so that when today's children start working, "they will have a better understanding of the programs their employers are going to offer," Mr. Beideman said.

Other Eddy winners also looked to address the entire family in their campaigns. John Hancock Life Insurance Co. USA, a third-place finisher in the financial wellness category for generic education efforts by service providers, for instance, developed an online college planning portal for plan participants and their college-bound children, which included tools for searching for schools and prepping for college entrance exams.

Catholic Health Initiatives, a national health-care system, went beyond the family in its approach to financial wellness, directing employees to age-appropriate stations on an interactive Financial Wellness Journey Guide that won it and service provider Fidelity Investments first place for not-for-profit plans with more than 5,000 employees.

The journey guide incorporated colorful figures that guided users to different "life-stage" posts, such as "Your Castle," which provided tip sheets and articles on buying a home. It also had stops for employees who were new to the workforce and those who were mid- and late-career. A nurse hired out of college might go to "College Town," while an employee older than 50 might go to "Retirement Road" where "there's a lot of information about things to consider when you hit that age," said Troy Lindon, system director of retirement benefit plans at Catholic Health Initiatives in Erlanger, Ky.

"We don't want to tell a millennial about age-50 stuff," Mr. Lindon said.

The campaign came about after the health-care system "segmented its population" in a bid to provide employees with information that was "bite-size" and "tailored more personally toward them," he said.

Indeed, many of the winning campaigns focused on specific segments of employees, particularly those nearing retirement or in retirement. TIAA-CREF, for instance, won first place for a campaign focused on participants over age 70, using direct mail, email and a website to educate them about required minimum distribution requirements.

The "Live Smart" campaign was a "follow-up act" to an earlier campaign aimed at participants between 60 and 70, which addressed more general issues about transitioning into retirement, said Wayne Williams, vice president of marketing integration and strategy at TIAA in New York. The second installation of the campaign prompted participants 70 and older with clear calls to action and encouraged them to visit the Live Smart website, which featured videos of retirees talking candidly about retirement, he said.

Judges praised the generic campaign's focus, saying it was "well-crafted" and "comprehensive."

St. Luke's University Health Network also built a campaign tailored to older participants on the cusp of retirement, which with service provider Transamerica Corp. took first place in the pre-retirement preparation category for not-for-profit plans with more than 5,000 employees. It developed a "Countdown to Retirement" program for employees over 60, which consisted of a "Get Ready to Retire" seminar, a Social Security/Medicare seminar and one-on-one counseling.

Because the health-care system had 10 hospital campuses, it wanted to make sure that employees in the over-60 set were aware of the resources available to them, said Sharon Cavanaugh, assistant vice president, retirement administration at St. Luke's Center in Allentown, Pa. More than 2,000 of the system's roughly 15,000 eligible participants, or about 13.3%, are over the age of 60, she said.

A slew of other first-place winners grabbed awards for campaigns geared toward employees over 50, among them ADP TotalSource, a multiple employer plan that won first place in the pre-retirement preparation category for corporate plans with more than 5,000 employees. ADP and service provider Voya Financial Inc. developed a campaign built around a "Nearing Retirement" website and two age-based webinars, one for participants ages 50–59 and another for participants 60 and over.

ADP realized that the largest demographic group in the plan was over 50, which prompted the sponsor to "get in front of this population," said Melissa Pignatiello, senior director of 401(k) MEP client service and support at ADP in Salem, N.H. More than 42,000 of the plan's 123,000 participants with a balance — or about 34.1% — are over 50, she said.

Many of the winning campaigns, however, stuck to more traditional plan goals, such as increasing participation and deferral rates — and applying a little humor and levity to drive home their messages.

Penn State Health, with record keeper Empower Retirement, designed a humorous email and postcard campaign to tackle the issue of getting participants to name beneficiaries to their retirement accounts — a campaign for which it won a first-place Eddy in the special projects category for not-for-profit plans with more than 5,000 employees. While roughly 80% of the health system's participants had named beneficiaries, it had brought on many new employees and wanted to make sure that it wouldn't "lose any ground," said Jennifer Sarff, Penn State Health's Hershey, Pa.-based director of total rewards.

The campaign employed a fun "Dear Abby" style communication from a fictitious columnist called "Ben. E. Fishery" that resonated well with the network's 17,500 retirement plan participants. A total of 586 additional employees designated a beneficiary as a result of the campaign, according to Ms. Sarff.

"People commented on the creativity," Ms. Sarff said. "It was light-hearted but yet it's a pretty serious message." 
The NFL Player Benefits Office, a first-place winner with Cloudberry Creative Inc. in the special projects category for union plans with more than 5,000 employees, also used humor and puns in its campaign to boost beneficiary designations. The campaign encouraged NFL players to "protect their assets" by appointing or updating their beneficiary information. It also created an animated video featuring Super Bowl champion Ryan Clark who exhorts viewers to "go out there and get it done" after reviewing the three NFL retirement savings plans.

As a result of the campaign, all three plans posted an uptick in the number of participants naming beneficiaries. Its 401(k) and capital accumulation plans each saw an increase of 1%, while its annuity program posted an 8% jump, according to the NFL Player Benefits Office.

Missouri State Employees' Retirement System, Jefferson City, also took a humorous approach to its Jargon-Free Savings campaign, which won the sponsor the top award in the special projects category for public plans with more than 5,000 employees. MOSERS created a series of six mini videos on jargon-laden topics, such as glidepaths, and rolled out one per day over America Saves Week. The videos featured in-house actors, including an employee reading a bedtime story to his granddaughter about a "young 401(k) participant."

The goal was to educate participants on "some of the more common and misconstrued words that are used in the industry today," said Brooke Rowden, MOSERS' defined contribution plans education and marketing coordinator.

She said it was best to avoid words like "deferrals," which participants don't understand, and use "contributions" instead.

"Retirement savings doesn't have to be complicated," she said. "Sometimes we use big words and create this language barrier with folks that doesn't need to be there."

National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, winner of a first-place Eddy in the ongoing investment education category for corporate plans with more than 5,000 employees, also used short videos to educate participants about its investment lineup. Unlike the MOSERS videos, it used three animated characters — Nate, Jieru and Connie — to explain the investment options in language that is easy to understand.

"Your 401(k) investment team are Sandians working hard to make sure your investment options are well researched and well diversified," Connie tells viewers in a soothing voice. "When you succeed, we do."