The new ‘Pension Mirror’ tool has already encouraged tens of thousands to engage with a traditionally dry topic.

Harnessing the creative potential of AI, integrated engagement agency Union Direct launched client Scottish Widows’ Pension Engagement Season campaign with a bang this year with their brand new ‘Pension Mirror’ tool. Putting the ‘fun’ into pension funds, the tool is already generating buzz both online and in workplaces up and down the country with its innovative age-guessing technology.

With a simple look in the digital mirror at pensionmirror.co.uk, the tool will guess a user’s age with amazing accuracy (or occasionally, comical over- or under-estimation!), before providing the average pensions savings figure for UK savers of that age. Spurred on by this social proof, Scottish Widows pension scheme members can then download the Scottish Widows app in a simple tap, to check their pot and see how they stack up. The idea came from a simple insight: people who check their pension regularly, retire sooner. The surest way of encouraging regular checking is to get pension scheme members to download the Scottish Widows app – and yet 82% had never done so. Pension Mirror was created as a fun, interactive and sociable gateway to do just that, employing both AI and behavioural economics in a user-friendly piece of technology. (The Pension Mirror tool was originated and built in house, using face-scanning, age estimating technology licensed from Visage. It uses average pensions savings data from the Office for National Statistics, Wealth and Assets Survey, 2018-2020.)

With one look in the Pension Mirror, the nifty tool will guess how old you are and tell you the average pension savings for your age.

Simon Ferguson, Deputy Creative Director, Union Direct, said: “We know pensions are far-off, boring and slightly scary – the last thing most people want to engage with. Even though the first step – finding out what you’ve got – is so easy, finding the motivation to do it is hard. So, we worked hard on a way to make it motivating. And fun, and social, and absolutely zero effort. Pension Mirror does all that; it’s a very simple idea and very smart technology that gives you all the motivation you need – and it works literally at a glance.”

For a traditionally difficult to engage audience, in a dry, abstract subject, the results speak for themselves:

• The Pension Mirror has been viewed 80,000 times since its launch on 11th September, with an average session duration of over 3 minutes.
• Over 22,000 unique users have checked themselves out, before any paid media support has even begun.
• In the first two weeks of Scottish Widows’ workplace engagement programme, engagement figures surpassed those after the full four weeks of last year’s campaign, with 4,848 virtual event portal registrations, 291 one-to-one call back requests and 4,627 attending live Q&A sessions.
• Downloads of the Scottish Widows app have soared, with average daily registrations more than doubling on ‘virtual event live’ days, when workplaces took part in the PES campaign.

Susan Robertson, Senior Marketing Manager, Scottish Widows, said: “This Pension Engagement Season we’re on a mission to prove that it pays to know your pension, and we couldn’t be happier
with the engagement so far with the Pension Mirror. It’s already creating a stir among our workplace scheme members all over the UK, and is being widely shared and commented on in social media – no mean feat in the world of pensions! It’s exactly what we need to encourage the British public to pay their pension some attention and drive downloads of the Scottish Widows app, ensuring people engage way beyond this September.”

The Pension Mirror was conceived and developed by Union Direct and built by partners Union Digital, incorporating face-scanning, age estimating technology licensed from Visage. Give it a
try at pensionmirror.co.uk