Sanlam is deeply committed to financial education and empowering South Africans to build financial confidence. At the same time, Sanlam is aware that the majority of South Africans do not have the financial means to cope with setbacks and do not have sufficient plans in place for a financially secure future.

The brief was clear; help our audience start and continue a financial confidence journey with Sanlam by showing how we can help them live and grow in financial confidence.

OBJECTIVES

- Drive campaign launch event attendance among key top tier media

- Introduce the public to Zesande and the campaign messaging, driving awareness in a tone that is authentic and relatable to South Africans.

- Prominently land the key message with a positive sentiment towards the brand

Humans struggle to connect with their future selves. They can't visualise their future, let alone feel confident enough to plan for it. So, we compressed an entire life into something that’s easier to understand. Something we’ve all experienced many times before. A day. When you wake up you’re 18, by lunch you’re having a mid-life crisis and by evening, if you’ve done things right, you’re in your 60’s and looking forward to retiring in comfort.

Due to inherent short-term bias caused by human physiology, people tend to think about life on a day-to-day basis. This is a barrier to planning for a financially confident future.

We partnered with SA’s favourite breakfast TV show to create 3 real-time interview segments with Zesande and Sanlam spokespeople, and supporting social posts and promos.

We created a Sanlam-branded space to host the country’s first media briefing in the metaverse to launch the campaign.

To entice key media to the metaverse launch we created 30 media drops. The drops tied into the campaign concept and took journalists on a culinary journey through the different life-stages Zesande experiences in a day.

Using the research we created a downloadable research report which was shared with media and made accessible to the public. The research was also used to create pieces of press content which were distributed through partnerships and targeted pitched

Meet Zesande. The world’s first age-fluid virtual influencer. Created by Sanlam to show how living an entire life in 24 hours can help a human comprehend their life over 80 years. She provides guidance and advice at key decision points of life. Because her age changes, she is also able to relate to any South African - regardless of age - on any platform. This unique ability allows her to age in real time for millions of interactions with South Africans across every digital medium - from real-time live tv to endless social engagements, and even into the Metaverse itself - all at the same time. Zesande’s age-fluid virtual ability allowed Sanlam to help all South Africans begin the future they deserve, today.

Sanlam’s LI:FE of Confidence set out to help people better plan for the future and improve their financial confidence with the help of the first age-fluid influencer in the world.

Zesande has become the most important virtual influencer in South Africa, relevant to anyone, and loved by everyone with over 43 Million interactions, based on interactions across all platforms.

The campaign resulted in a 55% increase in time spent on the Sanlam website, based on 2022 website data for a comparable campaign period.

Customer lead cost reduced by 75%, based on average CPC for comparable campaigns in 2022. Resulting in a 92% more effective CPC than the financial services industry average.

Ultimately, helping South Africans begin the financial future they deserve today, and secure a life of confidence.

*Note the campaign launched in January 2023