Media wasn’t just the canvas for the creative - it was a fundamental part of it. Each execution was made with the format of OOH in mind - from a billboard under a bridge splattered with mud, to a poster peeling at the edges, to a poster where the wiring of the lights has burned a hole in the site - this was the biggest use of special builds for any campaign in the UK ever.

Financial services in the UK have been too cautious for too long.

Ever since the 2008 crisis, banks and insurance firms have fallen over themselves trying to present a virtuous, community-serving face to the world. They gloss over anything negative, in a bland expression that they’re ‘here for you’.

The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated this trend. The major insurance companies talked about what might go right, rather than what might go wrong. Bland positivity, 2D customer personas, and a ‘the more the merrier’ approach to winning new clients, had resulted in a category full of brands which tried to appeal to everyone, and ended up relating to no one.

Hiscox is unique among insurers, in that it only insures industries in which it has deep expertise. Hiscox actually speaks to its customers. So we knew what people actually wanted from their insurer: a safety net for when things went wrong.

Other insurers talked about being ‘with you today, for a better tomorrow’, and ‘securing your future’. In short, they talked about everything other than risk. Which was odd, given risk is what insurance is for.

Hiscox’s new strategy did something radical - it advertised what we actually do. We highlighted risk in humorous, relatable ways, depositioning the vague, fluffy positivity of the insurance category and putting our customers’ needs first.

Hiscox is a specialist insurer, with a great reputation and long history.

After a difficult pandemic, brand fundamentals were beginning to crumble. Hiscox had to regain salience for its business insurance offering.

But it faced significant headwinds. Giant insurance groups dwarf Hiscox’s share of voice. The company needed to do something different, and needed to cut through.

So Hiscox launched a new brand platform - “Your story, underwritten by Hiscox”, which celebrates Hiscox’s unique expertise by showing the company understands the strange and stressful scenarios that befall SMEs.

Across out of home, radio, social and display, Hiscox launched its new brand platform with ‘the most disastrous campaign ever’. Each execution in the campaign had ‘gone wrong’ in a humorous way that linked to Hiscox’s insurance offering. A radical approach in a category that’s afraid of talking about risk.

Early tracking suggests extraordinary shifts in all priority brand metrics, with spontaneous awareness growing by 50%, and sales through PPC increasing 37%.

BRAND -

Unaided awareness as a key metric grew by 17% 

Those who saw the campaign were:  11% more likely to say Hiscox makes it easy to buy business insurance  and 9% more likely to say Hiscox champions small business owners 

BEHAVIOURAL -

Search volume increased by 50% YoY for “Hiscox insurance” and “Hiscox business insurance” keywords.  Business insurance quotes grew 10% vs baseline forecasts 

BUSINESS -

Sales grew by 11% uplift during the campaign.

The ambient work used the locations for the executions in surprising and innovative ways. For instance, we booked a site under a dank, grimey bridge to house the mud-splattered allocation.

Other executions used people’s expectations for advertising billboards and subverted them to create intrigue and give our target audience a wry smile - such as the poster printed in inches, rather than feet, as well as another poster where the print itself was peeling at the edges. Another execution actually broke the lighting rig above to expose the electrical wires - central to the concept spelled out in the poster’s headline.