Defying the pandemic: delivering new Insurance customers beyond expectations

McCann Central

Client: Barclays UK

The task for Barclays’ Insurance campaign was to drive awareness, consideration and purchase of Home, Life and Tech insurance amongst existing Barclays current account customers.

To achieve this, we had to do more than just harvest our share of in-market interest – and instead stimulate demand in the category. Barclays isn’t present on Price Comparison websites and so we had to circumvent price as a driver of choice using the collective power of the speed, ease and seamlessness of buying insurance from Barclays. Tapping into the insight that nothing’s more precious than our time – further heightened by the collective pandemic experience – we focused on the role insurance has to play in preventing us ‘moving backwards’ in life when unexpected bad things happen. Our creative proposition stemmed directly from this, positioning the purchase of insurance as a ‘save point’ in the game of life. The creative idea was ‘Bank it with Barclays’ – leveraging the brand strength as well as the products’ properties. Through a combination of in-branch, radio, digital display and email, creative executions evoked the emotions associated with loss of time with family, loss of home or possessions, or losing a mobile phone. The campaign delivered at greater efficiency than could have been expected in challenging circumstances. Branch footfall, especially critical for sales of Home and Life Insurance, was 50% below forecast levels for the campaign period. Despite this, Home Insurance delivered 94.5% against target and Life Insurance 93%. Tech insurance (less reliant on branch) delivered 177% against target.