Sara Alloy

VANGUARD

Life Ticker Campaign

• microsite • social artifact creation tool • custom algorithm • API integration •

THE ASK

Create an informational website and integrated social experience leveraging UGC to accompany the Vanguard Life Ticker above the line campaign. Make an intuitive interface that would help users to create their own Life Tickers. 

THE EXISTING CAMPAIGN

"What am I really investing for?" Vanguard took a new slant on the economic crisis by posing this very question in a new, user-generated content phase of the Vanguarding campaign My Life Ticker, aimed at engaging investors in a conversation about why they invest and the key factors in their investment success.

AN ADDITIONAL CHALLENGE

The interface was simple to design: import images from Facebook and let them inspire you. What do you want more of in life? Less? Enter as many words or phrases as you want to create your own Life Ticker. 

But behind this simple concept was a complex, custom designed social scraping algorithm. The ask was for more than just a superficial gimmick; the clients wanted something that would truly resonate with their group of passionate investors ("Bogleheads" after Vanguard CEO Jack Bogle). Our team spent time understanding what might resonate more with users: would you be more inspired by a photo you hadn't seen in years, or something you posted last week? Were photos with more likes more important, or more comments? What about ones where you had commented versus where others had? And what about how long someone had been on Facebook, what could that tell us about demographics and what might be important to a user? And last but not least, how trustworthy was the social information we could gather? And what if someone had no inspiring photos at all?

To top it off, this kind of experience was unprecedented. We explored social scraping campaigns like Museum of Me, but in all previous examples, content was generalized in a way that it could be meaningful no matter what was scraped. 

THE RESULTS

Using a set of curated inspirational images along side a combination of imported photo albums, we allowed users to tell us in short words and phrases what mattered most to them. The number of albums scraped and photos imported was based first in the time period of the users account, with different parameters set in years. Then, the algorithm looked for the number of comments (determined to be active engagement) and lastly, the number of likes (passive engagement). We found people were just as inspired by the default curated images we chose as they were by their own. And more impressively, people came back to create Life Tickers over and over as each time the algorithm returned a slightly different set of images.

WATCH THE CASE STUDY

AWARDS

Best Financial Services: Retirement Website, Midas Awards

UNDER THE HOOD