Payday Saveday

Having financial stability is critical to a healthy, happy society, but UK savings today are at a historical low. Research from The Money Advice Service revealed 11 million people have less than £100 in savings. That’s 11 million people who are only a broken boiler or an unexpected bill away from serious financial trouble.

We knew changing perceptions of saving wouldn’t be easy. Our research showed that people felt they didn’t earn enough to save, yet discretionary spending increased by 25% around the time people are paid. Essentially, the lure of impulse spending – when you’re feeling most flush – meant many people get to the end of the month with nothing left to save.

Nationwide’s ‘PayDay SaveDay’ campaign was born, based on the insight that it’s easier to save the day you are paid. Our campaign was crafted in line with key behavioural science principles; aiming to give a sense of a mass movement towards saving and deliver small nudges to encourage two key Nationwide audience groups who were at risk of becoming financially vulnerable – but for who saving a small amount of money each month was in fact within their means – to start putting some money aside each month, no matter how little, when they first got paid.

We wanted the campaign to feel extra special – a movement over a campaign activation, to deliver long term behaviour change.

We executed 9 creatives, across 3 different time-lengths, to safeguard against potential irritation of using comedy on TV, driving impact at launch with a roadblock across the Channel 4 portfolio in peak, reaching 5.5 million viewers in the first 15 minutes.

In VOD we built bespoke targeting lines with our key programmatic VOD partners to increase frequency against our core audiences and ran homepage takeovers on Channel 4 and ITV hub at the start of pay day week to make our message unmissable.

The AV strategy was underpinned by a Nationwide Happy Monday’s Picturehouse cinema partnership to encourage cinema go-ers to put aside the money they had saved on half price tickets.

We also focussed heavily on support channels that would drive increased resonance with our two core segments in and round pay day weeks specifically, with distinct touchpoint strategies for each using OOH route journeys data, radio, podcasts and influencers.