Eliminating the payday poverty cycle with FinTech PR

Wagestream is a financial wellness organisation that aims to eliminate the payday poverty cycle by giving employees the flexibility to stream their earned wages into their accounts when they need, at the discretion of their employer.

Company Goal:

End workplace debt

Clarity's Challenge:

Trumpet the death of payday loans

About

For many Britons, falling back on payday loans in a bid to keep their family financially afloat until payday, has become a grim reality. Yet many companies that issue these loans apply crippling interest rates, which in some instances can plunge individuals deeper into debt.

Innovative startup Wagestream is tackling the payday poverty cycle by allowing people to access a set percentage of their wages ahead of payday so they don’t need to resort to high interest loans or credit.

Wagestream tasked Clarity with highlighting the negative impact of payday loans and presenting Wagestream as tech-driven, socially impactful solution. The company wanted to move quickly as a host of rivals from both the UK and the US were planning to offer similar services.

Clarity kicked off the campaign with a high impact visual stunt. We created a funeral for payday loans. The images from the stunt were used widely across the media – including BBC, The Independent and The Guardian – to illustrate not just Wagestream’s proposition but also stories about the fall of payday loans companies in TechWorld and the BBC.

Following the stunt Clarity secured an exclusive with The Sunday Times which profiled the company and looked at the wider issues that Wagestream was seeking to address. This helped to establish Peter Briffett the co founder and CEO as a key voice not just on the fight against payday loans but more broadly on the impact of debt, as well as ‘financial education’ and ‘financial wellness.’

The momentum continued at the end of 2018 with a survey about the cost of Christmas which was featured in popular UK tabloid The Sun. Other findings from the survey were used as a ‘January Financial Hangover’ story featured in the Daily Express, The Independent, The Guardian and Forbes.

Wagestream has now established itself as the market leader in the UK and has become the first port of call for comments about payday poverty, flexible pay and workplace debt.

Results

• Secured 100 media hits in the first 4 months of the campaign

• Coverage across the UK media spectrum including; The Sunday Times, The Times, The Sun, The Guardian, Forbes, The Independent and City AM, as well as an exclusive Irish-focused story in The Irish Times, as the Ireland is also a key market for Wagestream

• Using focused local statistics, regional coverage also achieved in The Bristol Post, Scottish Financial News and Cambridge News.