ILLINOIS STATE TREASURER

Re-focus. Re-brand. Revitalize.

You have a good, solid product to offer but it’s very similar in many aspects to a lot of others. And it’s intangible. How can you differentiate it? What will make it stand out in the crowd?

Overview

Many states offer 529 Plans to save for college, and people have a choice about which plan to invest in. A new Treasurer took office in Illinois, and the Illinois 529 Plan was about to change hands from Smith Barney to Oppenheimer. The old plan was ranked in the Bottom 50 and the fees were high. The Illinois State Treasurer needed to position the plan in a new light and wanted to start with a clean slate. The question was, once you convince people to invest their hard earned money, how can you convince them to choose this plan?

The Challenge

Many people are intimidated by the daunting task of saving for college. The prospect of saving enough feels overwhelming and they don’t know where to start. And besides, when you have a two year old, it’s hard enough to picture them riding a bike, let alone leaving home and going to college. And so they put it off, postponing the dreaded day when they actually start saving, until all of a sudden that two year old is seventeen and high school graduation is around the corner. Where did the time go?

The Perspective

Most college savings plans have a visual icon that relates to graduation. But graduation seems worlds away. What we wanted was something to signify the here-and-now, real-time challenge of saving. That’s where the Illinois 529 Plan could be different. That’s where we could offer a unique perspective.

We needed something that was universally understood. Something simple and timeless. Something that anyone, even a child, could relate too. And so, we arrived at the tried and true Piggy Bank, representing that first easy step to begin saving, a little at a time, for the future. Simple, easy and achievable.

The Results

Bright Start now ranks in the Top 5 plans in the country. There were significant changes made to the way the plan was structured, and the fees were substantially reduced, but we also think that this new direction in marketing and thinking about the savings plan had a hand in making it really stand out in the field.