The Background
In 2019 Irish Life created a new proposition “One Irish Life”to build a Masterbrand.By utilizing evidence based planning Zenith knew that TV was a key medium to build the brand. Long term brand tracking has shown the One Irish Life has increased all key metrics and sales.
This campaign was on the Shortlist for Best Ongoing Use of TV at the TAMI Awards 2023
The Challenge
Irish Life has been the leader in life insurance and pensions since 1939 but only entered the health insurance market in 2016. At that time, VHI had dominated the market for 40 years and since Laya’s launch in 1997, they was regularly spending in excess of its market share to grow. A key path to business growth was making Irish Life more relevant to 25-44 year olds, which is the biggest recruitment audience for health insurance. This audience was also vital to the Irish Life investment category as this audience has money to invest but lacks the confidence or knowhow to get started.
With a lower SOV than its biggest competitors and two very different businesses to support, a new creative & media strategy was needed in 2019 for Irish Life.
There was 4 long term brand objectives:
1) Build Brand Saliency
2) Build Emotional Connections
3) Stand out
4) Build the brand
The Strategy
In the Health category, Zenith knew Irish Life were being outspent by VHI & Laya and that historically, they had a stronger share on TV. These competitors could focus their messaging solely on Health products but Irish Life needed to manage budgets across both Health and Investments. This diminished Irish Life’s ability to match the competitive set in terms of SOV in the Health category
The correlation between share of voice and share of market has been well-documented; and modelling showed that a 10% increase in ESOV led to a 0.09% gain in share of market in the Health category. While competitors could be single-minded, focused, and consistent with their Health messaging, each time Irish Life supported an Investments product on TV outside Health, it diminished Irish Life’s overall SOV in the Health category
As a result, a bold a strategic decision was needed. One that could grow SOV in Health but one that could also leverage the Irish Life brand strength from Investments & Pensions. This required a lot of stakeholder management to persuade various divisional leads to pool their resources and fund a campaign that would not be able to feature everyone’s products. Irish Life’s strategic decision was to move from a sub-brand approach to a ‘Masterbrand’ approach called, ‘One Irish Life’. The creative platform was launched with a new suite of creative assets across all products, created by Folk WT. These assets would unify brand codes and present Irish Life as one cohesive company. One Irish Life was also an incredibly flexible platform that could be adjusted based on the latest consumer data to ensure messaging could continue to evolve on the 4 key brand goals over a period of time 2019
‘Embracing Change’, was the One Irish Life launch platform: the idea that Irish Life’ can ready people for whatever the future holds in a warm and refreshing way. To set up the idea of ‘embracing change’, Zenith focused on under-represented moments of truth that capture a need for expert advice. From protection and investment to counselling, buying your kid’s first big shoes, reaching the point of retirement, and returning to work after maternity leave.
Having figured out ‘how’ to connect emotionally, Zenith took the path to further distinguish the Irish Life brand and make it distinctive in their respective categories. For example while Covid-19 lockdowns had substantial financial impacts on the whole population, one unintended consequence was that savings deposits increased 30% compared to pre-pandemic levels. The flexibility of One Irish Life allowed for two new pieces of copy to support Actual Trusted Advice for first time investors which leveraged Irish Life’s trust and knowledge.
The pandemic brought about ‘change fatigue’. Irish Life’s suspicion that the benefit of Irish Life’s expert guidance was less about being prepared to ‘embrace change’ and more about being prepared for ‘a better life’.
This was confirmed in research so Irish Life pivoted to, ‘A Better Life with Irish Life’, with two strong substantiations: showing what people could do to improve their lives and the lives of others and showing that responsible investing can help combat climate change with ease and at no cost to the customer.
The Plan
When developing the strategy for One Irish Life, Zenith needed to prioritise and identify which channel was strongest at driving awareness among their audience and allow them to take in the new messaging. Using Zenith’s CX Tool to rank Touchpoints, they identified TV as the strongest medium at driving awareness for the key audience of 25-44s.
Based on the goals Zenith needed to evaluate which channels were strongest at driving brand salience and triggering an emotional response. Central to Irish Life’s ongoing success has been the team’s determination to stay ahead of trends with evidence-based media planning. Ebiquity’s 2018 ‘Re-evaluating Media’ research was a timely reminder of the critical role TV could play in building brand salience in a way that triggers a positive emotional response; and as a result, budget was prioritized for TV. The One Irish Life strategy allowed Zenith to achieve parity in the Health category in terms of SOV.
Instead of avoiding overlapping campaigns, which would have had a negative impact on each other, the One Irish Life creative platform allowed them to run more than one product campaign at the same time. This means that when Zenith looked at their TVRs, they were able to outmatch VHI & Laya, both of which had larger budgets and
dominated the Health category.
Before One Irish Life, Investment and Health campaigns’ reach would spike and dip when they were on air, leading to inconsistencies. With the One Irish Life campaign, they could ensure that their 1+ monthly reach never peaked beyond 75% but also never
dropped below 40% ensuring that the key target was seeing Irish Life messaging more frequently and consistently across the year.
By creating One Irish Life, Zenith were able to achieve more weeks on air as TVRs could be balanced in weeks instead of upweighting to launch and re-support key products after they had been off air for a significant amount of time. Being on air more for more weeks allowed more consistent exposure for our One Irish Life messaging allowing us
a greater opportunity to achieve our key goals.
The Results
Red C Brand Tracking shows that the team achieved their goals
- Build Salience (Awareness) +6%
- Build Emotional Connection +6%
- Stand Out (Association with preparing for life change) + 14%
- Grow Consideration +9%
Through Irish Life’s brand tracking with Red C results tracking consumers displaying a happy emotional reaction to Irish Life exceeded brand tracking results before One Irish Life Campaign-showing how the ongoing TV campaign improved the emotional connection between the Irish public and Irish Life.
MMM modelling showed that switching to One Irish Life has made the campaigns more effective with advertising contributing to 27% of sales compared to 11% previously (pre 2019). The team could also attribute additional sales to the Health campaigns as a result of the consistency in the brand assets achieved through the One Irish Life activity.
“Adopting a consistent but agile ‘One Irish Life approach’ has helped Irish Life successfully navigate one of the most volatile periods of history and deliver sustained commercial success for both our traditional wealth and new health business. Zenith’s media planning, buying, and strategy combined with Folk WTs’ creative has allowed our brand to solidify its number one positioning within Life and Pensions, but also drive awareness for ourless established Investments and Health categories with our key target audience (25-44ABC1s).
As a result of our One Irish Life platform on TV, Irish Life is significantly more likely to be considered in the consumer mindset as a brand that supports customers journeys through Health & Investments by embracing small and big changes that inevitably happen throughout our lives. As the most emotionally connected brand in financial services (after Visa), with 1 in 3 now considering all 4 of our products, our ability to evolve at pace, listen to our customers and launch products to help them lead to ‘a better life’ has transformed our brand and business for better.”
Karl Symes, Head of Brand, Irish Life Group
Credits
Brand:
Irish Life
Media Agency:
Zenith, Part of Core
Award:
TAMI Awards Shortlist: Best Ongoing Use of TV 2023