To eat, or to wait for more

SOUTH Africans are notoriously bad savers with up to 75 percent of our disposable income used to service debt.

For National Savings Month in July, The Jupiter Drawing Room (Jhb) worked alongside client Absa Bank to bring a well-known study from the 1960s to life.

Saving is hard. We all know that and we also all know that we should do more of it. The challenge for the team at Jupiter (Jhb) was to encourage Absa clients to save by demonstrating the importance of saving …but not with the same tedious message.

The Stanford Marshmallow Test was a series of studies on delayed gratification that took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s at Stanford University. In these studies, a child was offered a choice between one small reward, provided immediately, or two small rewards if he or she waited until the experimenter returned (after about 15 minutes).

In follow- up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the pre- ferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index and other life measures.

Darren Kilfoil, senior copywriter at Jupiter (Jhb), says the team used this insight as the basis for re-creating the tests: “We initially cast over 200 children, and working with a top child psychologist, put them through a series of tests to determine who would give us the best performances.

“From there, we filmed 35 children to eventually get to our three stars: Misha, Naledi and Timothy.”

The children were led into a room one at a time and given a marshmallow. They were then given the choice of either eating it or saving it until later and receiving another.

Jupiter (Jhb) ECD Tom Cullinan says: “It turned out to be a test of iron will, and in our minds, the basis for a series of adverts with a powerful message. The takeout was simple: Saving can be hard, but the rewards are worth the wait.”