AARP Rewards
AARP, a membership organization for Americans 50+, had ambitious plans to turn its rewards program into a gamified behavior change platform motivating Gen X to get healthy, get saving, and generally get ready to get older.
Oh, and they had an even more ambitious timeline–just 4 months.
My Role
I owned content and experience strategy on the multi-million-dollar initiative, developing AARP Rewards’ new brand promise, messaging framework, voice and tone guidelines, content hierarchy, page content, and UX copy.
Working in lockstep with UX and visual designers, as well as the dev partners, I made sure every aspect of the program was playful with a purpose. Pop-ups explained how each reward-earning activity, whether it was a crossword puzzle or a retirement calculator, would pay off now and later.
And, while I wrote much of the UX copy myself, I also elevated the work of four more copywriters churning out email newsletters, reward PDP’s, activity descriptions, and launch promotions.
The Result
It took a massive team–with me leading four writers on the content workstream alone–but AARP Rewards did relaunch in 4 months with much fanfare. It quickly delivered 600k new users with millions of AARP members saying they renewed their membership primarily because of the rewards program.
My Process: The AARP Rewards Voice & Tone Guide
