Direct Line Re-launch - "We’re On It"

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.

• Meaningful – Superbrands use data to show how they meet the immediate needs of their customers to drive affinity. With the arrival of COVID-19, what drove meaningfulness in our category was turned on its head but we reacted by amending our plan to deliver customer refunds, regionalised community support as well as heroing DLG’s own problem-solving colleagues - from helpful media placements to charity donations.

• 1st place in insurers rankings for brand preference and communications awareness, overtaking Aviva.
• A campaign even more effective than its IPA Effectiveness gold-winning predecessor.
• Market leading brand metrics.