Car Insurance: "ZURICH CONNECT LAUNCH" Direct marketing by Publicis Dialog

Category: Product Launches
Advertiser: ZURICH FINANCIAL SERVICES
Product/Service: CAR INSURANCE
Agency: PUBLICIS DIALOG
Date of First Appearance: Jul 1 2009 12:00AM
Entrant Company: PUBLICIS DIALOG, London, UNITED KINGDOM
Executive Creative Director: David Prideaux (Publicis Dialog)
Planning Director: Andrew Smith (Publicis Dialog)
Brand Director: Jennifer Phillips (Publicis Dialog)
Project Manager: Craig Hawkes (Publicis Dialog)
Creative Director: Mark Buckingham (Publicis Dialog)
Head of Copy: Ian Sweeney (Publicis Dialog)
Media placement: TV - Tbc - 1st July 2009
Media placement: Radio - Tbc - 1st July 2009
Media placement: Warm Direct Mail - 133,674 Mailed - 10th July 2009
Media placement: Cold Direct Mail - 883,623 Mailed - 10th July 2009
Media placement: Directory Door Drop - 9,000,000 - 10th July 2009
Media placement: Door Drop - 6,125,552 - 12th July 2009

Describe the brief/objective of the direct campaign.
There are 100+ players in UK car insurance, spending £329M a year on advertising. So launching in this market seemed like a dumb idea. But we saw an opportunity to build on Zurich’s reputation for quality and challenge people’s perceptions on price by launching Zurich Connect, a new direct brand.

Explain why the creative execution was relevant to the product or service.
The relationship between these two characters is critical to the audience’s perception of the brand. People shopping for car insurance will only pay attention if it’s absolutely clear that the insurer offers a low price. That’s why we made the Orange character louder and funnier than his counterpart. He’s always looking for ways to upstage the Blue character. This gave us a framework around which to build every piece of communication and create interesting and memorable situations for the characters in all media.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective with reference to the projected response rates and desired outcome.
We created an animated double act. The Blue represents quality. He’s what you’d expect from Zurich; mature and responsible. The Orange is price. He’s young and cheeky. Their fun, quirky relationship allows us to talk about the brand’s unique approach to quality and price. OBJECTIVES Create the launch campaign for Zurich’s new direct insurance brand: Zurich-Connect in the UK and then support key local markets in launching across Europe. Achieve in 6-months a sales-target of 147,000 sales which was 121% higher than the full year 2008 plan. Achieve target-response-rates, cost-per-response & sale across all media channels Increase prompted awareness, consideration Lead the 2nd tier insurance players by end of 2009 (e-sure & MoreThan)

Describe the results in as much detail as possible with particular reference to the RESPONSE of the target audience including deliverability statistics, response rates, click throughs, sales cost per response, relationships built and overall return on investment.
From launch, we generated record sales, achieving 114% of planned sales & 112% of Gross-Written-Premium. All-the-more impressive since the business target for the 6 months from launch was a meteoric 121% up on the full-year 2008 plan and Zurich’s share-of-voice was 8 times lower than Direct-Line’s. Call volumes doubled month-on-month, rose 185% YOY (49,000 calls). Web visits doubled month-on-month, rose 146% YOY (117,000 visits) Record-sales – 114% of plan (19,591-sales) Record-GWP – 112% of plan (£6.8M-GWP) Direct Mail COST-PER-RESPONSE £4.59 (Warm-DM) At 36.8% of planned CPR Press COST-PER-RESPONSE See 8b & Brand Search results below. Radio COST-PER-RESPONSE £45 TV COST-PER-RESPONSE £167.71 At 94% of planned CPR Other Media COST-PER-RESPONSE £40 (Directory-Door-drop) At 69% of planned CPR £55 (Door-drop)