ASK YOUR MOTHER
Singapore Central Provident Fund · Financial Services
Challenge
Consideration — Working Singaporeans aged 25–40, predominantly dual-income couples and young professionals who are financially literate but emotionally avoidant about long-term retirement planning, treating it as a distant abstraction rather than a present-day responsibility.
Insight
In Singaporean culture, discussing money with family is considered deeply taboo — even more uncomfortable than talking about illness or death. This means that the people who matter most to each other financially (spouses, parents, adult children) have never once spoken openly about what would happen if their retirement savings fell short. The silence isn't ignorance; it's a cultural reflex rooted in saving face.
Idea
Instead of telling people to plan for retirement, force the conversation they've been culturally forbidden from having — by pairing real family members in recorded face-to-face dialogues about money, retirement fears, and what they owe each other, turning the CPF from a faceless government scheme into the catalyst that finally breaks the silence.
Execution
A documentary-style social content series filmed real Singaporean families — married couples, adult children with aging parents, siblings — sitting across from each other and answering escalating questions about retirement that they had never discussed. No scripts, no actors. Cameras captured genuine discomfort, tears, and breakthroughs. Short edits were distributed natively across Facebook and YouTube, while longer cuts ran as branded content. OOH executions in MRT stations featured single provocative questions from the films — like 'Do you know how much your mother has saved for retirement?' — with a QR code linking to the CPF retirement calculator. A social tool invited Singaporeans to submit their own 'unasked question' to a family member, with selected pairs invited to film their own episode.