Death in advertising / LifeDirect’s mascot was not pulling its weight and, according to Y&R, had been losing relevance with consumers. Killing Simon The Sloth closes his narrative and allows the brand to neatly move on to another creative execution.
The death of Simon is also attention grabbing because it is unusual. Brands rarely dispense with mascots so definitively (although GoCompare.com’s Gio Compario has been killed multiple times as part of a running joke about how annoying he is) and death is rarely broached in TV advertising.
McDonald’s discovered in 2017 how UK consumers were not prepared to accept an ad using grief to flog fast food. McDonald’s pulled the ad, which was about a child who loses his father (who was a big fan of the Filet-O-Fish), after more than 100 complaints were made to the Advertising Standards Authority.
In the wake of the McDonald’s debacle, professor Barbara Phillips of the University of Saskatchewan conducted a qualitative study and found that consumers’ attitudes towards grief in advertising varied largely depending on age, with older consumers more willing to accept death in a sales narrative. Younger consumers were open to the subject, but only if it was done appropriately or in a way that was relevant to the product or service sold.
In LifeDirect’s case Simon’s mortality was an opportunity to create a narrative around unexpected death and the value of being prepared, and this relates directly to its business.
Broad appeal / It makes sense for LifeDirect to create a wider conversation around life insurance. This is in part because, in 2016, New Zealand had the third lowest take-up of insurance among 31 OECD countries and new customer rates within life insurance were especially dismal, at 12%. Against this backdrop, increasing the size of the category is the correct priority. Also, as an aggregator of life insurance policies from many different brands, LifeDirect will likely benefit from general interest in the category anyway.
The competition element of the campaign meanwhile encourages participants to engage with the brand (in a way that reinforces the importance of getting their affairs in order) and furnishes LifeDirect with contact details and other data.
