2020 Silver Best Launch Campaign

Agency: M&C Saatchi

Client: Invesco

Campaign Name: Times Change

Campaign Overview

Old Master, new tricks

For Invesco, the challenge of attracting investors with lower expectations of returns was compounded by its audience seeing the brand as outdated.

Strategy

Investment return expectations have halved and board fees are compressed. To survive, investment houses need to find a sustainable advantage. Research suggested the answer was to win over a core attitudinal audience, the ‘influencer innovators’.

Invesco needed reinvention, to prove to these emerging investors it has a future-facing approach to meet their needs.

M&C Saatchi set about understanding their attitudes with research and in-depth interviews. They were identified as open-minded progressive leaders, desiring exploration with a goal of taking greater responsibility for doing better with the money they are entrusted.

The strategy needed to help influencer innovators reappraise Invesco as being united in like-minded values and get them to choose it as a progressive, forward-thinking investment house.

Creativity

Rather than abandon a proud past, M&C Saatchi made Invesco's heritage a core part of its reinvention through a platform that showed how learning from the past is the best preparation for the future.

The Times Change campaign celebrated Invesco's past through its disruptive use of Old Masters artwork. Each represented tradition, experience and the savvy of Invesco's fund managers - but they were repainted by hand to include a technological twist. A nod to the future, but only by understanding what got them so far.

Vermeer's “Girl with the Pearl Earring” became Invesco's “Girl with the Pearl Earbud” and Durer's “Self-portrait with box” transformed into “Selfie portrait with a smartphone”.

Results

Before the launch of Times Change, brand tracking familiarity sat at 22%. By May 2020 the familiarity score had shot up significantly to 51%.

Current use amongst target audience of influencer innovators jumped from 13% to 25%.

And there was a 10% growth in assets under management during the campaign period, a material increase of +$22.2B

The Team

Invesco - Matthew Heath, Chief Marketing Officer - Carsten Majer, Head of EMEA Retail Marketing & Campaigns - Viktoria Lang, Head of EMEA Campaign Management - Ruth Stockdale, Manager EMEA Campaigns

MCSaatchi - Ben Golik, Chief Creative Officer - Tom Kennedy, Senior Art Director - John Dutney, Senior Producer - James Calvert, Chief Strategy Officer - Katherine Ernst, Business Director - Emma Dorning, Account Director - Steve Timms, Copywriter