The last eighteen months have been significant for my development as a copywriter and for the company I was contracted to work with, People’s Partnership.
People’s Partnership is a not-for-profit financial services company with a focus on workplace pensions. Since the introduction of auto-enrolled workplace pensions, the growth of the organisation has been dramatic. As of today, it has over six million members. Twenty percent of the UK’s workplace pensions are through its scheme ‘The People’s Pension’.
Being both a not-for-profit and a financial services company may sound like a contradiction in terms, but this ethos embodies a significant selling point. It means there are no shareholders of the company’s products, so all money that gets funnelled in gets paid back out again to the scheme members. To better highlight this member-focused approach to finance, one which still prioritises growth and returns but without the middleman, People’s Partnership coined its own motto, ‘profit for people’.
The purpose is clear for People’s Partnership. The aim is to ‘help people build financial foundations for life’ by following three stated values:
‘We understand people by putting ourselves in their shoes’
‘We create simplicity by stripping out complications and removing obstacles’
‘We keep our promises by always doing what we say we’ll do’
The world of finance and pensions is a complicated and serious one. It involves many variables including the state of the economy and its long-term planning, UK governance, world affairs, private business... to name only a few. This is to say nothing of the unique situation each individual will find themselves in throughout their life. People’s Partnership’s three tenets provide an anchor for its objectives right the way through every department, helping to ensure the financial security of its members.
The bottom line is this: people want to know they’re making the right decision with their money and that it’s growing in their pocket.
My Approach as a Copywriter
To meet the seriousness of this responsibility within my role as a marketing copywriter, It was crucial for me to engage with the company’s values and to reflect them in my writing. I used plain English and a straightforward, conversational style with a ruthless and exacting approach.
The management methods for all documents I worked on were novel to me. To guarantee the utmost accuracy and clarity of each piece of work, regardless of what it was, all copy had to go through a vigorous approvals process through an online approvals and storage system called DAS. These processes had to be signed off by numerous people at every stage, from collaborators to compliance specialists, providing sure-fire assurance that the highest standards were met. The stages of these approvals were:
Collaborator
Copywriter
Money technical
Compliance
I found these processes to be refreshing for a copywriter. I was reassured that every document was of the highest possible standard I could produce and nothing less. Anything less could have led to profound detrimental consequences.
The only concerns were the barriers between each specialist group’s knowledge and the language they expected to suit their cause, and the sometimes-differing opinions on the chosen language that resulted. This is where the extensive in-house style and tone-of-voice guidelines were useful. They provided a gospel resource when such impasses on how and what to write arose. They were also beneficial in helping me to write copy that met the expectations of People’s Partnership’s conversational, plain English style.
The projects completed
Below is a list of the projects I’ve worked on to completion over the last year and a half.
Full Company Rebranding
This last year has seen People’s Partnership undergo its biggest rebranding in its eighty-year history. It’s easy to understand why such a rebrand was needed, given with contrast between People’s Partnership’s overt core principles and the opaque and inaccessible previous name of ‘B&CE’, which is short for ‘Building and Civil Engineering Benefits Scheme Trustee Limited’. I don’t know whether the abbreviated or the full-length version was worse. Most people – including members – wouldn’t be able to say what either stood for.
As such, the name was recognised as unfit for purpose for a modern and dynamic financial services provider. This rebranding was a colossal task for which every single document had to be rebranded, both print and digital. A series of launch communications were also created to inform people of this name change, why the decision was made, and to underscore for members the safety of their finances.
In a sentence, the rebranding chiseled out in stone the core principles of the company: ‘We’ve always been the people’s partner and always will be.’
Pension Scams Awareness Pledge
This was an initiative created by The Pensions Regulator and opted into by People’s Partnership to increase awareness among members and employers of the ever-growing problem of pension scams. I took the lead on this project from a copy perspective and am proud to say a certificate of completion was awarded by The Pension’s Regulator.
Pension scams are frequent and can ruin the lives of their victims. Scammers will often use psychological techniques and professional-looking materials to draw hard-earned money away from people. It was therefore crucial to create a culture of scam awareness within People’s Partnership and among the membership to prevent this from happening.
This culture of awareness was achieved through a series of actions by me:
Creating several versions of usable copy around pension scams, informing members to be vigilant as well as pointing them to further resources on the subject from the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) ScamSmart website.
Updating over a hundred documents from physical letters to webpages with this scam information and optimising its position within the document. These documents had to be analysed for their specific format to include the appropriate version of the pension scams copy.
By promoting an awareness of pension scams through information, guidance, and signposting, my work has also helped to solidify People’s Partnership’s reputation as a trustworthy and responsible organisation.
Retain & Grow
One of the biggest marketing teams in the business, Retain & Grow, set its objectives in the medium-to-long term. It had an extensive propositional roadmap to expand the organisation through multiple developments, including the company’s burgeoning online retirement planner and the new pricing scheme which offers a more flexible approach to its financial services. The rapid growth of People’s Partnership is largely the result of such dynamic and conceptual thinking in line with the modern world.
To deliver on these projects, I wrote and managed copy for an extensive host of media formats:
The People’s Partnership website
Powerpoint presentations for B2B
Dynamic emails
Dynamic letters
Brochures
Video scripts
TUTMAN Contracted-Out Pension Scheme Closure
I Crafted the communications of the closure of this particular scheme, informing each member of what this closure means and reassuring them that their finances are secure. For all members, I wrote a series of letters letting them know their money has either been paid into their The People’s Pension account, their bank account, an enclosed cheque, etc.
This project faced some significant complications which I had to work through, such as members’ shares being sold and held in the shares of companies that pay out dividends (portions of company profit) twice a year. This meant that additional payments couldn’t have been paid out to members or paid into their pots until the organisation received this payment.
Transfer Letters
I wrote a series of transfer letters indicating to the members what their options are for their pension now that they want to transfer it away from the business, followed by explaining the processes required to transfer depending on the circumstances.
As a copywriter, considering the best interests of both the company and its members is key. Retention was a clear aim of the initial letters. I made clear to the member what benefits they could miss out on if they chose to move their pension away from the business, as well as the potential risks and lack of a member-focused guarantee there was elsewhere.
Members’ options were based on their own individual circumstances, whether they lived abroad, or would have liked to transfer into a new pension scheme with another provider.
The bottom line
I am saddened to be leaving People’s Partnership, although I always knew this was part of the arrangement as a contractor brought in for a specific service. That the company should have needed my skills, and being employed in to execute them, serves as a complement to the rapid growth and bold vision of the organisation beyond its current anatomy. For this, I am proud to have played my part.