Case Studies - ARC/Stockland
BRIEF
Body: Sadly, not everyone in the universe is an ageless Time Lord, and it’s generally accepted on this planet that, once you’ve whizzed around the sun about sixty-five times or so, retirement is the thing to do.
Australian Retirement Communities (ARC) was established in 1973 and by 1999 had established eleven retirement villages around Victoria, at which time they came to Starship with a request for Starship to create for them a recognisable brand.
SOLUTION
The first thing we did was to research the retirement industry, through a series of qualitative focus groups and a quantitative study into the needs of the market via interviews by phone and in shopping centres.
From this we uncovered several key drivers for those planning to enter a retirement village.
Amongst these was a need to reduce their sense of loneliness in a situation where friends who had died, a desire to move closer to their children and other family members, and a feeling that their street or suburb had changed so much that they no longer felt connected to it.
Taking these insights on board Starship shifted the focus of ARC’s communications away from a “real estate” focus, to strongly promote the lifestyle and emotional benefits of living at one of their retirement villages.
We created their positioning line “Life begins at ARC,” which implied that even though the retiree was leaving their traditional lifestyle behind, the way was open for a new and enriching one. This was supported by showing ‘real retirees’ enjoying their “new” lives across all advertising and promotional materials for the company. This approach was revolutionary for the industry at that time.
RESULT
Up until ARC was taken over by Stockland and the account was moved in a realignment, we had successfully launched an average of one village a year, bringing their total up from eleven to twenty-two. In 2007 ARC was sold for over $350 million.
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