HDFC Life’s initiative starts a conversation about timely retirement planning

Indians today aspire to be self-dependent in their post-retirement years. The increasing trend of nuclear families makes it a necessity all the more. However, when it comes to actually planning for retirement, individuals often procrastinate. HDFC Life highlights this simple yet powerful reality in their latest initiative #CakeForThought.

HDFC Life has taken a unique approach to start a conversation around the need for timely retirement planning. They surprised Ranveer Brar- chef, Kavita Kaushik- actor, and Vijay Prakash- singer, with thoughtful birthday cakes. The carefully arranged pieces (big and small) of each cake give a clear perspective on how a delay in planning could lead to a significant impact on one’s retirement corpus. Each cake is a visually striking illustration of how early planning can enable one to build a higher retirement corpus - making it a #CakeForThought.

The campaign has been amplified on social media by Ranveer, Kavita, and Vijay where they express how receiving the retirement #CakeForThought on their birthdays made them think about the importance of timely planning in order to fulfil their dreams.

Speaking on the launch, Vishal Subharwal, Chief Marketing Officer & Head – E-commerce & Digital Business, HDFC Life, said “Timely planning is the key to every financial planning exercise. All our campaigns we have emphasised on this need. The idea of #CakeForThought originated from the insight that while most Indians intend to retire on their own terms, there exists a gap between this intent and actual action. Here we have gone one step further to highlight the impact of delay on the retirement corpus, through a visual epiphany- the retirement ‘#CakeForThought. We aim to nudge individuals to start planning early for their retirement, through this film.”

Speaking about the campaign, Rajdeepak Das, CEO and Chief Creative Officer - South Asia, Leo Burnett, said “The ‘CakeForThought’ campaign is a great amalgamation between data and culinary art. In our country, only 1 in 3 people do financial planning and with this campaign, we wanted to inspire people in their 40s to start thinking about retirement planning. And what better way to catch their attention than sending them a cake on their birthday which represents how timely financial planning can help them achieve their retirement goals. We worked with Vanilla Miel pâtisserie to create these cakes which were a work of art in themselves.”