In a departure from traditional health insurance campaigns focusing on specific products, deals, extras, free optical, dental and physio, or worse still a highly idealized yet unrealistic image of what happiness cover could bring, Bupa’s brand launch in Australia brought to life a deeply emotive ‘moment’ where people literally meet the healthier possibility of themselves.

The British health insurance giant wanted to merge its three Australian state-based brands, MBF, HBA and Mutual Community, into a single national brand. These brands had been around for more than 65 years – people literally grew up with them. Merging them meant migrating 3.3 million members to a new business they had never heard of, knew nothing about and, quite frankly, saw no need for. People were in fact crying out for a more meaningful, relevant relationship with their health insurer and confessed they didn’t need a health insurer but a health partner.

In just five months the resulting campaign didn’t just establish the new Bupa brand, it got people to think about facing their healthier self. Like a reuniting between estranged twins, challenging people ‘to find a healthier you’ allowed Bupa to demonstrate a whole range of emotions involved in all our lives when it comes to the battle of facing up to and trying to be healthier.

In order for the member base to stay intact as people were migrated from the three funds to the single Bupa entity, there was a need to continue to acquire new members at the same rate as the previous year. This was more than exceeded over the launch with 106% of target achieved, well ahead of the projected category growth rate of 1.6%, delivering an ROI of 325%.