Hiscox - The most disastrous campaign ever!
BACKGROUND
In a cluttered market with a focus on performance marketing, Hiscox’s shift in investment to lower funnel customer acquisition, had masked a long-term decline in brand metrics and increased acquisition costs which was inhibiting business growth.
Over 3 years, cautious and conservative communications contributed to diminishing brand metrics and increased costs, prompting a desperate need for strategic reversal.
Hiscox needed to increase awareness and return to brand building. But in a low-interest and highly competitive market where standard activity can be easily ignored, how could Hiscox make itself unmissable despite not having the lofty budgets of big named high street insurers?
STRATEGY
As Hiscox promotes a premium product, building trust and familiarity was crucial. However, our research revealed surprising similarities between Hiscox's customers and competitors in attitudes and behaviour. The key focus shifted to highlighting the importance of risk awareness, as 80% of SMEs were found to be underinsured.
Targeting prolific SME areas, our strategy focused on three pillars, ensuring we maximise impact bringing to life, in real life, the risks they faced.
- FAME: Create standout executions to cut through the noise.
- FAMILIARITY: High-impact sites in key SME locations and communities to grow trust and consideration
- FREQUENCY: Multiple messages in a ‘lighter for longer’ approach to drive searches, web visits and sales
OOH provided an ideal platform for large-scale visibility, offering both high reach and frequency across formats to grow awareness and drive response.
EXECUTION
FAME
What better way to proudly shout that you are back, bigger, bolder and better than ever, then launching with one of the largest OOH special build campaigns ever?!
Each of the 21 special builds brought to life authentic risks that can be underpinned by Hiscox insurance, from a Burst Water pipe with real running water on the Pump Station at Westfield, to 3D ‘Peely’ Posters, Mud splatters and Tiny Posters on Waterloo Roadside Domination, broken rigging in Bradford and a scorched broken wire with real LED sparking in Glasgow.
FAMILIARITY
The core campaign featured national Roadside D48s and 48s to drive saliency and trust. Large format commuter media added frequency, complemented by hand-selected Digital Iconic locations which conveyed stature both in the capital and regional hubs.
FREQUENCY
Leveraging OCS data, we discovered a significant trust metric spike for D6s among SMEs post-pandemic.
Combining this with the knowledge that D6s and large formats boost recall, we implemented a 'Lighter for Longer' strategy using community-focused trust-building D6s.
Results
This stand-out cross format campaign that involved one of the biggest ever deployments of special builds, and fame and familiarity driving formats to grow awareness by 17%, increase searches by 50% and grow sales by 11% during a 3-month period.
Remarkable PR was generated across both Financial and Media industries, heralded as such a success that OOH continues to be the lead medium in 2024.