A specialist, dressed like a generalist.
Open Access has run group retirement plans for Canadian businesses since 1997. It acts as a fiduciary, sells no in-house funds and fully discloses its fees. That is a better offer than the banks and insurers it competes with, but the brand was not saying so. The brief was clear: build awareness and warm leads through digital, without losing the trust two decades had earned.
The category has no faces.
The insurers and banks speak to big business in corporate, one-size-fits-all language. The robo-advisors look like every other SaaS app. Neither shows the person whose retirement is on the line. Open Access had the one thing neither side could claim: real people managing every plan, with no product to push. That was the opening.
Sell retention to the owner. Sell simple to the team.
Two groups shape this decision. Owners, finance leads and HR choose the plan, and they care about attracting and keeping good people. Employees influence the choice, and they want it to be easy. So the platform split into two concepts: Retirement Benefits for Everyone for the business, and Retirement Planning. Simplified. for the people in it. Both were mapped to a buying journey and a phased digital plan, foundation first, then scale.
One face. Two moments.
The campaign idea was a split portrait. Half the face is an employee today. The other half is someone like them at retirement. Six pairings across ages, genders and backgrounds meant any business could see its own people in the work. Headlines sat across the seam: Retire Well. Flexibility & Choice. Improve Retention. Employee savings. For life.
Bigger campaign. Same brand.
The campaign had to run across LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, programmatic display, video and a homepage redesign. The Open Access wordmark and its blue stayed. Everything else was built around them: a warm gold for headlines and calls to action, Futura PT for type, and a tight set of colour fields and icons. Every banner, post and web section came from one kit, so the brand read the same at 300 pixels wide as it did on the homepage.
Show the person the plan is for.
Financial brands default to charts, products and logos. People do not buy a retirement plan. They buy a future they can picture. When the whole category hides behind product, the person is the differentiator.
Questions
How do you advertise a group retirement plan?
Show the person the plan is for. The Open Access campaign used a split portrait: half the face is an employee today, the other half someone like them at retirement. Six pairings across ages, genders and backgrounds let any business see its own people in the work.
How do you market to both employers and employees?
Give each its own concept. For Open Access the platform split in two: Retirement Benefits for Everyone for the owners, finance leads and HR who choose the plan, and Retirement Planning. Simplified. for the employees who influence it.
Who led the Open Access campaign?
Aaron Armstrong of Serif + Gold led campaign creative direction and brand alignment as the solo lead creative on the project at Blue Meta, across paid social, search and programmatic creative and a homepage redesign, all built from one kit around the existing wordmark and blue.
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