SunLife: Welcome to Life After 50

Life insurance provider SunLife wanted to cement its position as a champion for the over-50s, so we created a campaign designed to generate a wave of quality editorial coverage, encourage conversation and raise awareness of the issues affecting its core audience.

Our research team hosted a series of focus groups with over-50s, finding that a major bone of contention was the misrepresentation of their age group. It was felt at work, at home, while shopping, on social media and on television. And it was flippant comments, small gestures and casual remarks — rather than overtly offensive behaviour — that caused the most upset.

Using this, and building on SunLife’s ‘Welcome to Life After 50’ advertising platform, we coined the phrase ‘casual ageism’ and set out to prove how apparent it is in everyday life.

Digging deeper, we surveyed 4,000 members of the general public, analysed the use of flippant ageist phrases across social media and investigated how the UK’s biggest brands represent the over-50s in their marketing campaigns.

This generated a wealth of data to inform a unique report that would shine a spotlight on the amount of casual ageism that exists in society.
Fronted by Carol Vorderman, the report sparked national debate on a hidden topic, generating 127 editorial media articles and 26 broadcast interviews, creating 788 million opportunities to see the SunLife brand in over-50s champion mode.

Coverage was 100% positive in sentiment and, most importantly, it aligned SunLife with its target audience – delivering on the core objective to position SunLife as a champion of over 50s.

Our post-campaign analysis found 90% of the brand’s core audience group was pleased to see the issue talked about and 77% wanted to know more.

SunLife’s Ageist Britain campaign won Gold at the 2020 AMEC Awards for best use of measurement.