Challenge
Re-launch
Summary
In order to unlock future growth in a competitive market, our Direct Line team used three media planning principles to transform into a ‘Superbrand’.

Re-launch
In order to unlock future growth in a competitive market, our Direct Line team used three media planning principles to transform into a ‘Superbrand’.
Direct Line were faced with greater competition than ever in the insurance category. It was time to re-assert the brand’s superiority in the category and become the insurance superbrand.
In order to unlock future growth in a competitive market, our Direct Line team used three media planning principles to transform into a ‘Superbrand’. We had a new creative platform to launch, we needed to get Britain on it with “We’re On It” and say goodbye to Winston Wolfe. As such, there was a superhero-sized task ahead of us: the right new platform and the right way to bring this platform to life.
We set about forensically diagnosing a formula of how the most successful brands use media. We discovered two key insights that unite superbrands:
1. You needed to outperform on all three measures: Salient, Meaningful and Different.
2. And, more interestingly, three underlying drivers which communications could influence: Awareness, SoV, Great ATL.
We followed the planning formula that we uncovered and created a winning blockbuster launch campaign to set Direct Line up for future long-term success.
Here are the superbrand media principles and how we applied them to the launch:
Salient – Superbrands do more than just focus on excess SOV to drive salience. They over-invest in long-term brand messages, in multimedia campaigns, and in premium formats, as well as integrating paid and owned channels. Therefore, We delivered a TV world first, having ITV, Channel 4 and Sky each introduce and launch our superhero beating executions whilst simultaneously repeating for all viewers watching on demand, delivering 14.2m viewers in one hit.
Different – Superbrands position themselves away from other brands in the category by behaving unexpectedly, focusing on media channels the category isn’t known for. To distance ourselves from a category which seldom uses outdoor, we took the brave step of a movielike launch, in the largest format available: superhero worthy building banners.