With Canadian drivers ranking amongst the worst in the world, and safe driving having a questionable reputation in Canada, belairdirect car insurance wanted to promote its app that monitors driving habits and rewards its users with discounts on insurance, by changing Canadians’ perception of safe driving to one that is more aspirational in a light and entertaining way.

In order to encourage and champion safe driving, it was imperative to find the right way to do it without fear mongering and find a fun and exciting way to get people to listen.

With ‘Safety On My Mind’, belairdirect car insurance wrote and composed an original slow jam about safe driving. With perfectly crafted lyrics and music that pay tribute to classic 90s and 2000s R&B ballads, to remind Canadians that there is nothing sexier on Valentine's day than safety.

More than just a bland parody or traditional ad, it's a full-bodied song that can hold its own against everything on the radio. Meant to mimic professional pop songs, the music video and promotion of the song were given the same attention to detail and production value that you would expect from the likes of a Nelly, Toni Braxton or Jennifer Lopez.

Through this well-crafted song and music video, belairdirect found an ingenious way to deliver its safe-driver discount messaging, seamlessly blending in within the lyrics and feel of the song.

The relationship between Canadians and safe driving has always been marked with complexity. While obeying road rules is generally valued by the majority of the population, the truth of the matter is that Canada has a high accident rate, and safe drivers are ridiculed in popular culture for being boring and uninteresting people.

In parallel, Hip-Hop and R&B have always had a strong fanbase in ‘Drake-Country’, but more specifically in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA)- one of the most diverse cities in the world. This allows for a vibrant music scene, enabling the ever-growing music genre to unify the area's many communities. With this understanding, it’s important to note the GTA also has the highest concentration of car accidents in Canada.

belairdirect used these two cultural pillars to vehicle a message about its safe-driver discount, and created ‘Safety On My Mind’, a slow jam about the sexyness of safe driving.

‘Safety On My Mind’ is at the heart of belairdirect car insurance's Valentine’s Day campaign. As if an insurance company talking sexy to its consumers wasn’t surprising enough, they went all in and wrote, composed and recorded a full 2 minutes song in a professional recording studio using real composers and singers. The goal was to be as faithful as possible to the music genre, and ensure the song was not only communicating the brand message, but also good enough to casually listen to over and over.

In only 2 weeks of its release, ‘Safety On My Mind’ reached more than 9 Million people. What was supposed to be a small execution for select local Canadian markets, gained attention from the globe with the Spotify single streaming in more than 48 countries around the world.

In Canada, the song made its way into broadcast radio rotation and the music video was even repurposed into a 30s TV spot for the Canadian Super Bowl.

The reception was unanimous across all platforms, with people praising belairdirect for its originality, but also applauding the insurance company for doing something so unusual to reach out to both the younger, and nostalgic generations alike. The brand also saw a spike in immediate awareness following the release of the song and music video.