Making pensions pop at Primark

Primark is one of the most recognisable high-street retailers in the world, with over 80,000 colleagues working across stores, warehouses, and offices, including 6,200 in the Republic of Ireland.

When the Irish government announced My FutureFund, a new auto-enrolment retirement savings scheme, Primark needed to make sure colleagues weren’t caught by surprise when it came into effect.

The challenge? Pensions aren’t exactly known for being engaging, and most of the core messaging coming through government channels was filled with policy language and long timelines. Primark’s workforce is transient, with an incredibly diverse demographic so, for many colleagues, the messaging they were seeing felt distant, confusing, and above all else, easy to ignore.

Primark saw an opportunity. Not just to inform, but to inspire.

The benefits team asked us to help bring the topic to life - to make pensions more visible, relatable, and interesting. The communication campaign needed to address two fundamental points:

1.      What Primark needed to tell their colleagues; and
2.     What they wanted to tell their colleagues.

Colleagues needed to understand that if they met the criteria, they would automatically join the goverment's My Future Fund - no ifs, buts or maybes. And Primark wanted to make sure that no one was caught by surprise when deductions started to come out of their pay.

At the same time, Primark also offers the Primark Pension Plan. The benefits team wanted to make sure that colleagues understood this option too and could make informed decisions based on what was right for them and their families.

To get the communication right, we spent time in Primark stores to get a sense of the environments that our communications would be landing. It’s safe to say that the behind-the-scenes ‘colleagues only’ spaces are seriously fast paced! So, how do you cut through the noise in busy environments and resonate with a diverse, always-on-the-move workforce?

It was clear that Primark needed something bold, warm... iconic even. They needed Nana

We created a campaign centred around “Nana”: a fun, fashionable and vibrant pension advocate who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. With a mix of wit and wisdom Nana highlighted the benefits of saving early and helped colleagues to understand their options. Nana brought personality to pensions, helping the message stand out across noticeboards, table talkers, posters, and digital platforms.

Her message was simple:

‍“It’s your future—own it.”

With a twinkle in her eye, she answered the questions people were really asking: What is auto-enrolment? Why does it matter? What do I need to do?

Nana was supported in delivering these key messages to colleagues by Primark’s Head of Sales for ROI & NI, adding a familiar face, Primark personality and gravitas to the campaign.

We always follow a few non-negotiable principles when crafting communication: avoid jargon, be relevant, and focus on action. What Nana represents is that next step in elevating communications – being bold. This can be quite daunting, especially when your audience is your internal colleagues, and on a topic that doesn’t lend itself to exciting visuals and snazzy language, but the results were worth the risk.

Bringing Nana from the spark of an idea into a fully fledged, fabulously dressed pension advocate has been on an incredible journey. Nana didn’t just inform— she entertained. Employees talked about her, managers leaned in, the message landed. And the ask for pink faux-fur coats went through the roof!