NTUC Income's 'Me First' campaign by BBH Singapore reframes retirement planning as self-priority, reaching over 4 million Singaporeans within two weeks of its
ARCHIVENTUC Income Me First Challenges Singapore to Rethink Retirement Planning
NTUC Income's "Me First" campaign is a 2021 Singapore film campaign created by BBH Singapore that challenges audiences to prioritise their own financial security before spending on others, using the contrasting philosophies of two siblings — Denise and Derek — to reframe retirement planning as an act of personal responsibility rather than selfishness.
The campaign launched in September 2021 across Singapore's digital and social landscape, with a direct call to action directing audiences to NTUC Income's dedicated campaign microsite and supporting financial planning content. Its central proposition is as straightforward as it is culturally provocative: putting yourself first financially is not a moral failing but a prerequisite for a secure retirement. The campaign invites audiences to declare themselves either #TeamDenise or #TeamDerek, creating a social participation mechanic that extends the conversation well beyond the film itself.
"Me First" sits within NTUC Income's established retirement planning communications platform, building on a body of work the insurer and BBH Singapore developed together across several years. Rather than introducing an entirely new strategic direction, the campaign shifts emphasis from familial obligation — the territory explored in earlier work such as "The Best Gift for Your Child" — toward individual financial agency and personal retirement ownership. In doing so, it reflects a calculated evolution in how NTUC Income speaks to working Singaporeans about their financial futures. The campaign is documented in NTUC Income's 2021 Sustainability Report as one of two major public awareness initiatives of that year. Clapboard scores "Me First" at 64 out of 100, reflecting solid strategic clarity and cultural relevance alongside room for deeper creative ambition.
ARCHIVENTUC Income identified a specific and deeply rooted cultural tension in the Singapore market. The Singaporean tendency to prioritise the needs of family members, children, and ageing parents over one's own financial wellbeing is not merely habitual — it is often celebrated as a virtue. BBH Singapore's strategic insight, articulated through the campaign's creative framing, repositions this selflessness as a potential liability when it comes to retirement planning, arguing that personal financial security must come first if individuals are to be genuinely capable of supporting those they care about.
Singapore's life insurance market provides meaningful context for this positioning. According to the Life Insurance Association of Singapore, the market reached S$5.38 billion in weighted new business premiums in 2021, representing growth of 23 per cent year over year. Within that figure, single-premium products reached S$2.58 billion, up 41 per cent year over year, also per the Life Insurance Association of Singapore. This was a market in expansion, and competitive pressure was intensifying: according to the Life Insurance Association of Singapore, the top five insurers increased their market concentration by 3.2 percentage points in 2021, and the top ten insurers accounted for approximately 95 per cent of the Singapore life insurance market as of 2020. Great Eastern Life held 25.7 per cent of Singapore's insurance market in 2021, according to insuranceasia.com, making it a formidable competitor for NTUC Income in the retirement and life planning segment. Prudential Singapore represents another major incumbent in this space, with a well-established retail presence and brand recognition across working-age Singaporeans.
Against this backdrop, BBH Singapore's strategy for "Me First" is designed to do something no product feature or premium comparison can achieve: shift the underlying belief system that shapes financial decision making in Singapore. By naming the enemy — culturally sanctioned self-sacrifice — the campaign creates permission for a behaviour change that benefits both the consumer and the brand.
"Me First" is built around a single, repeating creative device: two adult siblings with opposing relationships to money. Denise is unapologetically self-first in her financial habits, saving and investing before spending on others. Derek views her approach with barely concealed disapproval. The film uses their dynamic to dramatise a financial philosophy without resorting to charts, testimonials, or the earnest product demonstration that characterises much financial services advertising in Singapore.
The decision to anchor the campaign in character rather than product is a significant creative choice. Finance advertising frequently struggles to generate emotional engagement because it defaults to abstraction — returns, percentages, projections. BBH Singapore's approach for NTUC Income inverts this, using the specificity of sibling conflict and shared family memory to make retirement planning feel immediate and personal. The characters of Denise and Derek function as proxies for two archetypes that Singaporean audiences are likely to recognise in their own social circles, and the hashtag mechanic — #TeamDenise versus #TeamDerek — invites audiences to locate themselves within the debate rather than observe it from a distance.
The creative team at BBH Singapore behind "Me First" includes Chief Creative Officer Sascha Kuntze, Group Creative Directors Janson Choo and Khairul Mondzi, Business Director Manavi Sharma, Associate Account Director Shu Li Tan, Head of Strategy Rebecca Ash, and a senior strategy team whose collective effort shaped the campaign's cultural positioning. The film is produced to a broadcast standard appropriate for digital-first distribution, with the visual and tonal register calibrated to feel more like short-form drama than financial services communication. This production approach directly supports the campaign's strategic intent: to disarm the audience's habitual resistance to insurance advertising before delivering its retirement planning message.
"Me First" delivered measurable reach and attitudinal impact within a short window of its September 2021 launch in Singapore. According to Lia Org Sg, the campaign reached more than 4 million people within two weeks of going live — a significant figure for a market of Singapore's scale. Two survey results, also cited by lia.org.sg, provide further evidence of the campaign's resonance: 98 per cent of Singaporeans surveyed agreed there are times when people need to put themselves first, and 93 per cent of surveyed Singaporeans believed that prioritising personal financial needs enables earlier and better retirement planning.
On the platform where Clapboard's archive records the campaign, "Me First" has accumulated 1,787,567 views, 268 likes, and 45 comments. These figures, while not independently verified as a complete cross-platform total, represent documented evidence of sustained audience engagement with the film asset. The campaign received no verified awards at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards, which is notable given the scale of its reach and the strength of its attitudinal survey results. This absence may reflect the competitive intensity of the 2021 awards cycle or the campaign's positioning as part of an ongoing platform rather than a standalone creative statement.
Structurally, "Me First" is effective because it aligns the mechanics of social participation — the #TeamDenise versus #TeamDerek framing — with the emotional specificity of the storytelling, creating conditions for organic amplification. The attitudinal data suggests the campaign succeeded in shifting the cultural conversation around retirement planning in Singapore, which is ultimately what NTUC Income commissioned it to do.
NTUC Income's "Me First" campaign argues that prioritising your own financial security is essential for retirement planning. Launched in Singapore in September 2021 by BBH Singapore, it uses two siblings — Denise and Derek — to dramatise the tension between cultural selflessness and personal financial agency, inviting audiences to join the debate via social media.
BBH Singapore created "Me First" for NTUC Income. The credited team includes Chief Creative Officer Sascha Kuntze, Group Creative Directors Janson Choo and Khairul Mondzi, Business Director Manavi Sharma, and Head of Strategy Rebecca Ash. The campaign launched in Singapore in September 2021 as a film and digital campaign targeting retirement planning audiences.
The "Me First" campaign reached more than 4 million people within two weeks of its September 2021 launch in Singapore, according to the Life Insurance Association of Singapore. Survey results from the same source show 98 per cent of Singaporeans surveyed agreed there are times when people need to put themselves first financially.
BBH Singapore identified a cultural tension specific to Singapore: the tendency to prioritise family obligations over personal financial planning. The strategy for NTUC Income reframes this selflessness as a retirement planning risk, positioning personal financial security as a prerequisite for supporting others, rather than a sign of selfishness in the Singapore market.
No verified awards for "Me First" are recorded at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards. Despite this, the campaign reached more than 4 million people in Singapore within two weeks and generated strong attitudinal survey results, according to the Life Insurance Association of Singapore.
"Me First" continues an established retirement planning platform NTUC Income developed with BBH Singapore over several years. It follows "The Best Gift for Your Child," launched in 2018, which received more than 5.1 million views across Facebook and YouTube according to The Drum, shifting the narrative from parental obligation toward individual financial agency and personal retirement ownership.
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