You won’t find ‘launch a product during a market crash’ in the typical fund manager’s playbook.
But for global actuarial firm Milliman, that’s exactly what happened. Its SmartShield Managed Accounts – designed to protect investors from a market crash – were launched just as the coronavirus pandemic locked down the economy in early-2020.
While the timing showed the funds’ strengths, financial advisers weren’t looking for new investment opportunities as equity markets plummeted by about one-third.
Milliman Australia Head of Marketing, Neil De Beger, says it decided to instead release research that could give some comfort to advisers’ clients.
They asked Collaborative Media & Publishing (CMP) to write an article about the enormous value of the government’s Age Pension based on Milliman’s comprehensive actuarial calculations.
“While the article doesn’t explicitly sell SmartShield – purposely – it adds enormous value,” De Beger says. “It gave us a ‘brand halo’ effect as a result, especially during COVID last year, where advisers were in a flux for a while.”
Focus on the story, not the numbers
Finding the story that resonates with readers and potential customers is crucial to maximise the impact of content marketing.
Milliman ran a comprehensive Monte Carlo simulation to model the probability of different outcomes across 20 couples with retirement savings of between $50,000 and $1 million.
CMP focused on the fact that the Age Pension can potentially offset a one-third decline in the value of a wealthy retired couple with $1 million of super.
“We used it during the early stages of COVID very successfully as a bit of thought leadership to help advisers have better client conversations. It was very useful content.”
Milliman offered the article to the Australian Financial Review, which ran its own story re-using the same opening sentence structure with just a few minor edits. A Milliman funds management partner, CFS, also re-ran the original Age Pension story on its website, further expanding the promotion.
A key reason the content worked is due to its precise use of words and article structure, which aligns with journalistic style. The first sentence distils a complex financial story into a simple, yet powerful one. The second sentence expands on the intro with context that tells the reader why this story is important and worth reading.
The article then flows into a case study, using a graph to show how the Age Pension acts as a safety net across different super balances. It ends with more background and a soft call to action pointing back to Milliman’s services.
Data-driven stories require an investment by an organisation, but it pays off with unique and valuable content that can be re-used multiple times.