An Overview
How do you rev up an insurance brand that’s been dormant for over a decade?
And stand out in a fiercely competitive but low-engagement category that inspires customer anxiety and vulnerability?
esure is an established brand with spades of cultural capital. Despite it being 15 years since the original ‘Calm Down Dear’ ad aired on TV, there’s still an 82% prompted awareness today.
It was marketing gold – but we needed to build a whole new meaning and connection around it.
The ‘Calm Down, Deer’ campaign was born.
Introducing Dave O’Deer – a fluent device that allows us to tell a wealth of messages in a completely ownable (and en-deer-ing) way.
With his ear-piercing scream, Dave embodies the anxieties UK drivers and home owners can go through when faced with those dreaded panic moments when they might need to turn to their insurer. These are dispelled by the understanding and reassuring voice of esure – Lorraine Kelly –and the promise you can be sure with esure.
A brave idea needs confidence before it launches, and we achieved that through multiple waves of testing with over 1,200 consumers.
The first two waves used our agile in-house research to test the creative strategy product proposition early, highlighting a 97% positive sentiment score. A final two tested the TV commercial with the gold-standard testing platform, System1 against their global database of ads. Tested against their ad effectiveness database, the final ad ranked within the top 2% of over 1,000 consumer insurance ads.
The commercial confidence achieved through testing supported the business case to secure brand investment.
‘Calm Down, Deer’ is now rolling out across full-funnel assets and an unmissable media campaign in collaboration with VCCP Media – with fluency, familiarity and fame built into every asset.
