Thrivent - Financial Products & Services Marketing Campaign of the Year
Company: Thrivent, Minneapolis, MN
Entry Submitted By:Prophet Strategy
Company Description: Thrivent is a Fortune 500 not-for-profit financial services organization headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Appleton, Wisconsin, and founded by Lutherans. As a member-owned fraternal benefit society, it operates under a chapter system, serving nearly 2.3 million members
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Categories - Industry
Nomination Sub Category: Marketing Campaign of the Year - Financial Products & Services
Nomination Title: Thrivent "Invested In" Launch Campaign
Thrivent's new brand campaign debuted in in media onJune 14, 2020.
Despite strong financials, Thrivent was suffering from a decade of year-over-year membership declines and stalled growth opportunities. Thrivent was built as a Fraternal Membership organization serving a specific market in financial services, but clients and prospective customers were moving to larger and more well-known financial services companies who are offering for advice and investments.
To survive and evolve for the long-term, Thrivent needed a new and broader strategy for brand-led growth. With Prophet’s partnership, the Thrivent executive team decided to pivot transform the organization with a renewed focus on financial expertise and ability to drive financial clarity for customers, so that all of humanity may thrive.
The new corporate strategy led to a re-definition of Thrivent’s overall brand and marketing strategy, including a broadening of Thrivent’s addressable market. Through a robust segmentation, Staying true to Thrivent’s purpose, but broadening outside of faith – a new target was identified to priorities, with whom Thrivent can build a competitive advantage and who creates a ‘halo’ to pull in secondary targets.
Prophet partnered with Thrivent to launch the brand in-market with a campaign to drive awareness, engage emotionally connect with aa new audience looking for more purpose in their finances, show the world how Thrivent helps their clients achieve financial clarity, and ultimately, drive new client growth.
If you are providing written answers to the questions for this category, you must answer this third question: Describe the development of the campaign or program: the planning process, the goal setting, the creative and media development, the scheduling, etc. (up to 250 words):
To build awareness with a new target, earn consideration as a leader in financial advisory, and generate demand, the campaign needed to break through the clutter, make gains quickly in market, and demonstrate how Thrivent could help the target achieve financial clarity—all done in a pandemic, during civil justice reform and a contentious election. Research showed this audience values the idea of living a life of meaning and gratitude. With Thrivent’s rich heritage as a purpose-driven organization, this led to a new positioning “Thrive with Purpose” and an integrated marketing campaign: “Invested In” to convey it.
The June launch was multi-channel including print and digital media in financial publications such as The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Yahoo! Finance, broadcast/streaming/OTT and online video with radio, social, digital display and podcast placements. Two TV spots were tested for break-through appeal and favorability and launched to tell Thrivent’s story and create brand differentiation – one a unique illustration style, and the other filmed (safely with COVID protocols). The approach helped us to reach target customers and build credibility for the thousands of Thrivent financial professionals.
To demonstrate financial expertise, content was deployed including a video series featuring our financial professionals advisors and a new Thrivent Thinking blog on a re-vamped Thrivent.com.
Parallel to the brand work, an “always on” lead gen campaign captured intent around financial planning across a variety of need states including retirement planning, financial planning, life insurance shopping, and investments—all aimed at driving leads and appointments for Thrivent.
In just six months since the brand launch, the campaign is already seeing tremendous results against the aggressive goals set by Thrivent, including:
-Increase in aided awareness, on pace with our three-year goal
-+99% in brand favorability (also above benchmarks in believability and relevance) among our new target audience
-+100% across all key brand equities
-Expert +267%
-Confident +308%
-Charitable +199%
-Modern +141%
-Relevant +123%
-74% higher website visits for 2020 (vs 2019) credited to integrated campaign, with traffic to local financial professional web sites up by 20%
-Increase of 387% in new leads from previous year
In addition, Sales organizational feedback at Thrivent has been very positive
From Thrivent financial professionals:
-"Lead Quality is generally high. Brand awareness of new prospects is increasing. We’ve written business on 100% of our leads" – FP Janice Mowen
-"Love the program. Wrote one fee-based plan with Life, DI, and investments likely to come" – FP Darin Stevens
The learnings and success of the 2020 campaign is now extending into 2021, as the brand campaign will move from launch to brand storytelling, and personalized for different life stages, triggers and financial services journey needs.
Attached is a PPT featuring creative highlights across the campaign including print, TV, digital display, social, and content marketing. Two of the TV spots are embedded within the PPT, as well as links provided to them and one of the DRTV spots “Love Insurance.” Thank you for your consideration.