Four year consulting project working on brand identity, positioning, thought leadership strategy, product development, behaviours and culture. All with the lens of considering how to "break the category" of the retirement sector.
PROJECT SUMMARY
In 2013 We began work on a retirement development proposition, that later became known as PegasusLife. The business had a mission to change perceptions of retirement living in the UK and try to address the psychological ‘stigma’ that existed around the sector at the time, driven by various cultural and class-related factors, and further exacerbated by the inferior quality of the product available, and the uninspiring way in which it was communicated to the market.
The generation retiring today – dubbed the ‘baby boomers’ – are often fortunate enough to have both financial security and their health: they are more active and less ready or willing to stop working or doing the things that they love than any previous generation. The goal for PegasusLife was to provide an offer that could feel relevant and attractive to them, and our job was to find a way to help them do that through the power of their brand.
CONTEXT
In the US and Australia, almost 20% of people aged over sixty live in specialist retirement housing. However in the UK, it’s less than 1%. We needed to understand why that might be, and what we might be able to do about it.
DISARMING A STIGMA
Our assessment was that the way to encourage the generation retiring today to move to a retirement home was to find a way somehow to disarm the stigma attached. There was no getting away from the fact that people had very negative associations with the idea of retirement housing. Whilst it made ‘rational’ sense to live in homes that were designed specifically for people at that stage of life, and all the evidence showed how living amongst a community was the way to tackle loneliness and that having care on hand when you need it gave great comfort to people as they aged, this was ultimately a much more emotional decision for people.In the most part, unless they felt they had no choice but to move, they simply weren’t going to.
THE ONLY THING THEY SHARE IS A BIRTHDAY
One of the factors we identified within the sector as being off-putting for people was the extent to which ‘people over sixty’ were being treated as a single homogenous group. When in reality, all their tastes, interests, ideas, politics, and so on, were completely different as they were within any age group. We began to work with the mindset that the only thing these people share is a birthday, to see what ideas would emerge.
THAT’S NOT ME
Of great importance to the business in the early days was being able to position itself as attractive within the architecture and design sector – with an ability to attract leading practices to help re-imagine the future of retirement housing in a way that would be appealing to this audience. Not only did the public have negative associations of the sector, but the design industry did as well. The team decided an exhibition, to be held a the NLA (New London Architecture) building in London, would be a good way to position the business in a different light. The exhibition featured early design work from some of the London projects, alongside the branding and communications strategy highlighting the stigma and seeking to disarm it by showcasing a product completely at odds with people’s existing ideas.
“BREAKING A CATEGORY”
Breaking a category requires pushing the boundaries on all aspects of thinking. It’s not something that can be research led in a traditional way – as Henry Ford said, “if I had asked people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse”. We knew people didn’t connect with the idea of retirement housing, so we couldn’t just tinker around the edges – every aspect of the thinking, from the location, to the architecture, to the approach towards property management, as well as of course, the brand, needed to be considered and re-imagined.
One of the questions we asked ourselves as a way to begin the creative process was "If Keith Richards did retirement housing, what would it look like?"
DEVELOPING THE PRODUCT
The approach taken by the design team was to re-invent and re-shape every aspect of the retirement housing product. The land strategy focused on finding sites that reflected the aspects of life we knew were important to people: proximity to city living, connection to culture, connection to nature, beautiful surroundings, and so on. Significant investment in landscaping was made, not just to create enjoyable outside spaces for residents but to consider the importance of placemaking and legacy within development more broadly.
The buildings were a combination of restoration projects and new builds, and the company won more housing design awards for these than any other developer at the time. The facilities and amenities were considered in relation to the price point and the audience in each location, together with the overall property management and service offer which was designed to be specifically appropriate for each project. The branding and product specific marketing for each scheme was bespoke, allowing us to present an individual story able to capture the specific attributes of the proposition for each site.
MARKETING STRATEGY
The brand and its ability to capture people’s imaginations through its marketing was of critical importance to the success of the business. Having great buildings, great facilities and great property management services wouldn’t be enough, if we couldn’t get people to be open to the core idea of retirement housing itself as a product.
ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN
The advertising focused on taking hold of the stigma and disarming it directly. The first phase of advertising was a collection of old fashioned ‘long copy’ ads that told the story of the philosophy of the business. Thoughtful, considered, design led: everything the sector was known to be at odds with. The second phase focused on proving to audiences that the company saw them differently – not just as a homogenous group of people of a certain age, but as individuals with tastes, ideas, politics.
The third phase featured historical political movements from the 60’s, evidencing the businesses understanding that these people had been leaders in the movements that went on to shape the culture, politics and ideas we have today. The final stage showcased the individual products themselves in each of the lead locations including in Westminster, Hampstead, Cheltenham and Sevenoaks.
RECOGNITION
The campaign was recognised by the D&AD, the most prestigious awarding body in the creative sector. PegasusLife became the first property company to be given the award.
OUR ROLE
We worked with PegasusLife from its inception in 2012 until 2017 and were part of the team that developed the vision for the business – working together with the senior management on all aspects of the proposition, product strategy, brand identity, thought leadership and communications approach, as well as all touch-points of delivery across approximately thirty sites in the UK – from land acquisition and planning, through to the marketing and selling process and the ongoing management of each building.
TEAM
The PegasusLife creative team comprised a whole group of leading creatives and thinkers from architecture, interior design, landscaping, operations and development, spear-headed by the creative director within the PegasusLife business at the time. We worked on the brand development aspect of the project, together with Mark Smith.