An always-on campaign to boost salience by showing mortgage brokers what Pepper stands for – and that their wants and needs are understood.
The challenge
Broad specialist mortgage lender, Pepper Money, has always recognised the importance of a two-pronged brand-building approach – with consistent, long-term brand work creating awareness and short-term tactical campaigns delivering conversions.
For a number of reasons, though, Pepper’s focus has been pushed forcefully towards the latter in recent times – with product and service messaging forming the vast majority of their output.
While this has brought about some quick wins through spikes of commercial gain, it’s also played a part in restricting the brand’s potential to flourish on an ongoing basis. A lack of consistent brand-level presence meant that Pepper would just never be front of mind with enough brokers when the need for specialist support arose.
Our brief was to help remedy this – through the development of an always-on brand campaign that told the story of what Pepper was all about – not just the products and services it offered.
The solution
Within Pepper’s verbal identity is a line that sums up their whole broker offering:
‘Ambitions, fulfilled’
Fulfilling ambitions means different things to different people, but research told us that one thing true of all brokers was the ridiculously challenging time they were going through. An already-tough, multifaceted job was being made harder still through factors like regulatory change, economic and political instability, and global unrest.
All of this was resulting in professional – and therefore personal – hardships.
The barrage of rate and criteria changes, the frustration of late product withdrawals, hard conversations with already-nervous clients and generally having to do more work for the same money was taking its toll.
Because of this, working days were getting longer, evenings lost and family time pushed aside. With these strains contributing to an alarming number of downturns in mental wellbeing, the fundamental ambition of brokers was pretty clear: the alleviation of professional burden to give them the work/life balance they were missing.
The core insight had been unearthed. And the story the brand needed to tell was clear:
More you. More meaningful. More memorable
Through this simple, single-minded idea, the campaign taps into the audience psyche – briefly taking them away from criteria, products and paperwork to remind them that behind the broker they’re forced into being, is the one they’re supposed to be – with other priorities, wants and needs.
Whether it’s being more efficient, productive and profitable at work, or being more present, sociable, balanced and healthy away from it, the point is clear – that Pepper can help them live their best lives again.
The messaging works hard to deliver the empathy Pepper seeks to be known for. And in doing this, it makes good on the brand’s vision of ‘recognising the individual in everything we do’. At an even deeper level, the brand purpose of ‘helping people succeed’ is also reflected.
Visually, different techniques are used to reveal people’s ‘real them’ emerging from the chaos of their professional existence. The gentle motion of these reveals brings an air of calm, to dramatise how the brand can help brokers feel. While the constant presence of ‘Pepper Red’ makes the campaign’s promise immediately recognisable as Pepper’s.
Like all the best brand work, Be More You’s reach doesn’t end with paid advertising. It stretches well beyond – as far as mortgage exhibitions and physical activations in the form of wellbeing events – or Retreat sessions. Within these, there’s a holistic focus on raising the physical and mental wellbeing of brokers, through group exercise, talks, nutrition and more.
After all, why just talk about work/life balance, if you can actually help to create it.
The results
Brand building is a never-ending process – and a notoriously multifaceted one to track and measure – with longer-term metrics like overall perception and sentiment, recall and attribute association all being factored in.
But the signs are looking positive so far. The first edition of the mortgage industry’s Project Mercury broker survey has been released since the campaign’s launch – and it shows that Be More You is having the desired impact.
Pepper’s brand image score is up significantly – rising from 5th place in 2024’s Q1 edition to 1st place in Q2. While marketing recall is also on the rise – shifting from 4th to 2nd place in the same period.
‘Retreat’ has been a huge success – with brokers and wider industry peers united in their positive experiences and feedback. LinkedIn, in particular, has been full of praise – congratulating the brand on defying convention and putting the person before the professional.
More brokers are now recognising Pepper and making a conscious choice to familiarise themselves with the brand. Which is a massive step on the road to true salience – and sustained success.
