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SOA Actually, you can hold teenagers’ attention

Five different images. The first on the left shows a girl smiling at the camera and says

Opportunity 

Actuarial Science is ranked #8 in “Best Business Jobs” by U.S. News & World Report. But awareness of the profession is low and misperceptions abound. The Society of Actuaries (SOA) challenged Yes& Lipman Hearne to create a digital awareness campaign targeting pre-college teens, college students, parents, teachers, and advisors in the US, Canada, and selected markets around the world to position actuarial science as a desirable career for today’s status-driven, social media-conscious youth. 

Phone displaying a screen with a man holding a basketball and the words

Insight

We knew that if we could get–and hold–the attention of the teenage and young adult audience, we could deepen the conversation with clear selling points about actuaries’ high salaries, strong career satisfaction, and opportunities to use intellectual skills to address the world’s most pressing challenges. 

Five different images. The first on the left shows two guys playing basketball and says

Solution

We developed a concept around the word “Actually,” which familiarizes the audience with the word “actuary” and plants a seed of recall. Storytelling, energetic animation, and contemporary sound design all make the executions inherently clickable. 

The “&”

While the campaign was originally developed for the US and Canadian markets, Yes& Lipman Hearne has partnered with SOA’s staff on the ground in several Asian markets to adapt the concept for international use and to spread the word on a global scale.   

the Results

The campaign has been a hit with the elusive youth audience–outperforming previous efforts by large margins across every metric and throughout all paid social media channels. Skippable YouTube pre-roll ads achieved an impressive 82% video completion rate with these generally attention-deficient teenagers.