BCT’s Marketing Excellence: Advocating investor education with innovation in the new normal

While MPF is mandatory for the working population in Hong Kong, the majority of the workforce, especially those newly entering the job market, often feel disengaged from it, finding retirement planning very remote and remain clueless about investment choices and benefits of MPF. Given the low level of engagement, communicating the benefits of MPF through traditional marketing approaches can be difficult, especially in the wake of social distancing during the pandemic as many people have been staying at home and leaning towards online gaming as a source of entertainment to kill time.

With such a daunting challenge ahead of them, BCT launched a branding campaign featuring Hong Kong’s first-ever online MPF simulation game to promote investor education in a fun and engaging way. The campaign attained excellent results and helped BCT snap up the silver award of the Excellence in Financial Marketing category in Marketing's Marketing Excellence Awards 2020.As part of BCT’s brand building campaign highlighting investment excellence and full range of e-services, the company needed to find fresh ways to engage Gen Z, connecting with them through the methods and channels that they relate to best. Instead of sending traditional brand messages, BCT cleverly leveraged gamification to pull them into the brand so that they were no longer just listening, but actively participating.

With this game-changing strategy, BCT launched Hong Kong’s first-ever online simulation game in the MPF market to promote investor education and help audiences gain investment experience at zero cost. Not to mention, participants were joined by renowned artists Louis Cheung, Kelly Cheung and investment columnists Leung Sai-kit as star players, portraying different types of MPF consumers to bolster the game’s appeal.
The meticulously designed game settings, including monthly missions, e-tasks and rewards, not only drove higher engagement with these younger audiences, but also traffic to and usage of BCT’s MPF eJourney to experience first-hand the easy and seamless MPF management. It successfully encouraged participants to log into their game accounts, manage their virtual MPF assets more effectively by completing risk profiling online to learn their own risk appetites, and improve their investment decisions with up-to-date market information.

To amplify the simulation game to reach more young investors, BCT adopted a two-tier community marketing approach. They first tapped into micro-influencers, who boast a niche group of followers, and university ambassadors, leveraging their influence to penetrate respective university groups. Then, to further extend the reach, BCT collaborated with Mr. Miles, a highly influential social community with trusted calibre, further driving higher quality leads.

Bob Lee, chief business officer of BCT Group, commented on the campaign success, “The campaign has struck the right notes with a combination of efficacious applications of digital tools, social content and gamification marketing. It has been a revelation to the financial and MPF market to help drive engagement with the younger generation beyond traditional marketing means and help MPF consumers become conscious of the importance of effective MPF management and retirement planning.”

He added, “As a trusted MPF partner, it is always our mission and inherent value to provide best-in-class MPF products and solutions for the Hong Kong working population. While communities across the city wrangle with the ‘new normal’ and predicaments such as social distancing amid the pandemic, we ride on the prowess of digital innovation in areas of marketing and service offering to ensure that our services are attuned to our members’ needs.”

This article is sponsored by BCT.