Special Group

Client: Partners Life
Product: Life insurance
Title: Last Performance
Media: Branded Content
Country: New Zealand
Date Of Campaign: 7th August – 31st Dec 2022

Background: 87% of Kiwis have their cars protected with insurance. But when it comes to our lives, a mere 28% of Kiwis are protected. We’re one of the most underinsured countries in the world.To change the status quo of life insurance in New Zealand we needed to understand why people weren’t taking it out. Discovery revealed three barriers: 1. People hate thinking about dying.2. New Zealanders are plagued by a “she’ll be right” attitude.3. People hate ads. In fact, 66% of New Zealanders would rather do chores than watch an ad.We then landed on a core insight that unlocked our strategy: Hindsight is often the only way we realise the things we should have done, but didn’t.

Idea: While hindsight is great to understand the things we should have done, it’s a little bit different when the subject is life insurance. Because those affected by it are the dead’s people families or the dead themselves. But that gave us the idea to use the dead to talk to New Zealand. But not just any old dead, but rather people New Zealander’s are willing and wanting to watch without even knowing they are watching an ad.That’s how we came to use the dead characters in New Zealand’s highest rating murder mystery series, ‘The Brokenwood Mysteries’ to tell their audiences about the benefits of having life insurance.

Results: As a result of the campaign we saw:135% Increase to Partners Life website across the campaign period. 75% Increase in direct leads to our financial advisors. 45% New Zealanders reached 26% brand awareness New Zealand’s leading newspaper called it, ‘‘A clever example of how brands are using television more creatively.” Lance Hopkins, Head of Integration at TVNZ called it “A brilliant example of integrating brands around the TV platform.” And someone who believed it was part of the show complained to the Advertising Standards Association complainant saying, “I felt I had been tricked into watching this advertisement.” This claim was dismissed.