Your Message, Set in Film
Art by Jackson Epstein
How well you convey the retirement saving message to your clients’ employees can help decide their future. This year, Practice Development explores various means to communicate with participants—present and potential—and do it more effectively.
Videos, creatively filmed, can be a powerful tool for engaging employees, for showing them the value of investing in the plan. Jennifer Benz, senior vice president with Benz Segal, in San Francisco, says video at its best “gets people excited about a topic” through an emotional story.” It also shines when “explain[ing] concepts difficult to understand on paper” she says.
Oswald Financial in Cleveland uses the medium this way, employing white screen animation to jazz up its self-produced short, generic films on complicated topics such as Roth vs. traditional plans or the company match, says firm Director David Kulchar.
Visuals and other effects can help keep viewers engaged—key because people decide within the first few seconds whether to keep watching, Benz says. “Many videos are viewed for only 30 to 45 seconds, if that,” she says.
Custom videos can be short—either stand-alone or in a series—or longer, as with enrollment presentations. The latter, often made for clients with multiple work sites or shifts, provide an overview of the plan and how to save, Kulchar says. His firm heightens the customization by addressing a topic the plan sponsor has told him will especially interest the employees. Oswald films the live presentation, which the sponsor then makes accessible, through email or its intranet site. These videos not only serve the client, Kulchar says, “they help us get more places and are more cost-effective.”
He also saw economy in bringing production in-house. He determined that outsourcing, long term, would cost more than hiring a marketing specialist, whom he could use in additional ways. Now with an on-staff expert, he has “total flexibility,” he says—he can change his message easily, at limited expense—and has consistent branding across the firm.
Horizon Financial Group, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, also does its own production, starting with writing its scripts (all compliance-approved). It posts its generic, educational short pieces on YouTube. That platform is free, notes Bill Bush, firm media manager.
As to custom, says Horizon partner Andy Bush, video can explain a move the client plans to make, as with a video they produced to “take the mystery out of a recordkeeper change.”
For an adviser who would rather outsource, hiring a firm such as Benz’ will buy wisdom, expertise and a professionally finished product. Benz, or maybe Engagement Strategist Megan Yost, start by helping identify “key messages” and three top takeaways.
“We then develop the messages and think about the sequence [for presenting them] in this short time frame, and how we can use visuals and music to explain them in a way that’s emotionally powerful,” Yost says. If employees should take action at the end, the video needs to set that up.
As to cost, “You could spend a couple of hundred dollars and you could spend tens of thousands of dollars,” based on approach, Benz says. Advisers serious about incorporating video, she says, should weigh their resources against their goals, then “figure out how to insure there’s a direct return on investment; tie it to actual participant behaviors and things you want to accomplish that are important to your plan sponsors.”
Advisers who are game to shoulder the technical work can purchase a decent set-up—camera, computer, software, wireless mike, lights and green screen—for $5,000 to $6,000, says Andy’s brother and partner Bill Bush. Even smart phones produce “HD-quality good enough for folks to view,” he says.