Like many parents balancing a hectic work schedule with the demands of playing Santa, I understand the appeal of shopping for deals at this time of year.
With time short and expenses high, it’s hard to resist the constant barrage of adverts urging us to “buy now” to secure special offers on gadgets, clothes, or the toy trends that sweep classrooms every year – this year it’s Squishmallows, electric diaries and Nintendo switch at the top of my children’s wish lists.
Meanwhile, festive marketing campaigns get bigger every year for retail brands. These are meticulously crafted by large teams of very clever people several months before the first day of Christmas.
These campaigns create compelling, emotional experiences
Take Cadbury’s ingenious Secret Santa postal service, which has helped maintain Dairy Milk as a stocking-filler favourite. And it’s hard not to take in the magic of Sainsbury’s – who we share an office building with – when I see their Big Friendly Giant-inspired advert promoting locally sourced produce. Waitrose, meanwhile, has gone all-in, with an interactive two-part mystery campaign about the missing Christmas pudding.
These campaigns succeed because they go beyond just selling products. They create compelling, emotional experiences—whether it’s fostering magical family moments, expressing love or encouraging thoughtful giving that makes us feel better about ourselves.
This creativity, combined with urgent messages to “buy now before it’s too late” create the perfect storm of shopping fever. And this year has been no different, with £1.12bn spent on online deals alone on one of the biggest pre-Christmas bargain moments of the year: Black Friday.
At Octopus Money, we decided to follow in the steps of big retail during this spending season with our own campaign based on generating an emotional response: Black Friday 2044. We wanted to encourage people to dream big, and to think about what saving now instead of spending on one-off purchases could help them afford in 20 years.
The campaign enabled us to hear more about our audience’s future hopes and dreams when it comes to their money. People like Moni, who dreams of setting up her very own home podcast studio; others who were saving for the trip or honeymoon of a lifetime; those planning a new kitchen; and on the sillier end, Don, who dreamed of a year’s supply of sweets on retirement.
We’re losing the battle for hearts and minds to the instant dopamine hit of buy now
Through working out how much people would need to save per month to achieve these dreams on a new web page calculator we set up, we were able to help people visualise the future they could achieve in a way that felt achievable.
We also conducted research to better understand what drives people to shop during this season and how their attitudes towards spending compared to saving for the future. The results were sobering, though perhaps not surprising for those in the financial advice industry. We found that Brits planned to spend four times as much on Black Friday deals this year as they did on investing into an ISA throughout the entire year.
What’s more, almost half of those surveyed (46%) expressed concern about not having the funds to meet their long-term dreams, such as being mortgage free (32%), living comfortably (69%) or supporting their children and grandchildren (33%).
We’re losing the battle for hearts and minds to the instant dopamine hit of “buy now” – and moments like Black Friday, Christmas deals and the January sales prove it every year.
My dream is for our industry not to try to compete with the retail sector, but to take inspiration from their strategies. Christmas adverts show that emotional impact drives action. So to change behaviour, we need to make saving and investing feel just as exciting as buying a new toy or gadget right now.
With highly personal client relationships, financial advisers are actually the most aptly placed to help create this shift. Every day you have real, human and emotional conversations about money. This has the potential to create a deeper impact than an advert on television ever could.
So we must be inspired by the John Lewis campaigns, and think about innovative ways of engaging existing audiences and reaching new ones.
If spending millions on a shiny new TV advert is not in your remit, there are several other ways to get creative. It could be about generating simple and engaging written or video content about your work on social media, writing blogs, or even partnering with schools or local parenting groups to help spread the message across all ages. Interactive family workshop sessions that encourage clients to bring their children and grandchildren along are a great way to help instil good habits now.
Ruth Handcock is chief executive of Octopus Money
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