7 agencies in the running for CPF integrated marketing and creative account

The Central Provident Fund Board (CPFB) has seven agencies vying for its integrated creative and marketing account. The agencies in the running are Fiftyfull, Formul8, McCann Worldgroup Singapore, Mullenlowe Singapore, Ogilvy Singapore, VMLY&R and The Thinc Group. CPFB first called for a pitch in January 2020, for an integrated marketing agency, either as an individual company or as a consortium.

According to Gebiz, the appointment will be for a period of one year with option to extend up to two years on a yearly basis. The incumbent on the account is Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore, which was appointed in April 2018. Prior to that, formul8 held the account with CPFB for a year.

In a tender document seen by Marketing at the time, the agency will be tasked to conceptualise, implement and manage the integrated marketing campaigns, primarily the annual retirement planning campaign, and undertake the creative execution for other supporting initiatives such as roadshow paid publicity. Agencies bidding for the account will be evaluated on price competitiveness, robustness of proposed overall marketing communications strategy and framework, as well as creativity, originality, applicability and authenticity of concept proposals and messaging.

Last year, CPFB launched the “Tsk” ad which showed senior citizens expressing their annoyance which resulted in some netizens calling the ad “distasteful”. In response to this, a CPFB spokesperson told Marketing then that “a good number” of the respondents in the focus group found the ad “relatable” and was able to resonate with the early retirement planning message.