Table of Contents 6 2012 OVATION Awards Winning Entries

OVATION Awards Winning Entry
Communication Management
Social Media
AWARD OF MERIT
Entrant’s Name: Adrienne Connell
Agency/Client: High Road Communications / Sun Life Financial
Division/Category: Division 1 / Category 13 – Social Media
Title of Entry: BrighterLife.ca: Sharing ideas about money, health and family
Time period: September 2011 – Current
Brief Description: BrighterLife.ca (and its French sister site, Simplementbrillant.ca) is an innovative digital content
marketing platform created by Sun Life Financial to help Canadians answer money, health, family and career
questions. It avoids the use of traditional marketing tactics focused on direct selling of products and services.
Instead, using a blog platform tightly integrated with social media extensions, BrighterLife.ca embeds relevant and
specific calls‐to‐action within its content, driving consumers to SunLife.ca, where they can learn more about a
financial product or find an advisor, and ultimately generate sales.
Need/Opportunity
SunLife.ca is the primary digital marketing platform for converting prospective customers into clients.
However, Sun Life Financial wanted to engage consumers earlier in the sales cycle, before they had
considered Sun Life or were even aware that they had a need that might be met by a financial product.
Quite simply, there was no communications vehicle for Sun Life to pique the interest of regular
Canadians interested in browsing lifestyle‐based content or in the discovery phase of the customer
journey where they are encountering advice, tips and information that could inform their life decisions.
Industry research pointed Sun Life toward a major opportunity: to become a publisher that shares
interesting and engaging content that attracts, engages and converts readers into customers. According
to a study by the Custom Content Councili, custom content helps build awareness, drives purchases and
improves relationships with customers. The survey reveals:
90% of consumers find custom content useful
78% believe organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships
with them
61% feel better about a company that delivers custom content and are more likely to buy from that
company
Connecting with these consumers is not as simple as putting up a website and hoping people find it.
Gaining share of voice through social channels and optimizing search rankings has become a key factor
in reaching consumers. Canadians are at the forefront of this behaviour change in accessing content
across blogs and social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTubeii:
From 2009 to 2010, Canadians spent 58% more time on blogs reading 36% more pagesiii
83.1% of Canadian Internet users are active on Facebook
13.7% of Canadians use Twitter each month
17.6 million Canadians visit YouTube every monthiv.
Sun Life Financial used this and other research to help devise an approach that would reach consumers
where they prefer to engage in dialogue, offer content wherever consumers prefer to digest it, and build
a positive affinity for the Sun Life Financial brand in an expanded target market. With the support of
High Road Communications, BrighterLife.ca was born. It is an informal, engaging, no‐pressure lead