Ace Metrix, a firm that ranks the effectiveness of television advertisements, has released its list of the best TV ads of 2011. The 9th most effective ad, based on a proprietary scoring system, is State Farm's awesome 9/11 tribute ad, which I have already written about, but which also deserves a repeat mention.
It is worth noting that State Farm came in a virtual tie for 8th place with Budweiser's own 9/11 tribute ad. And while I quite liked the Budweiser ad – those kneeling Clydesdales strike an incredibly noble pose – I still think State Farm has the superior ad. For me, it hit that perfect note between patriotism, community, rememberance and reverance. The ad could have gotten maudlin, or renewed old heartache over the tragedy of 9/11. But instead it shows kids who all look like they weren't old enough to have been around for 9/11 (much less remember it) singing a song of hope and appreciation to firefighters who definitely were around for that awful day, and still carry with them the memories of it. The ad says a lot of things. It says thank you to the first responders we lost. But more importantly – and here is the genius of the ad, coming from a life insurer – is that no matter how awful the loss, life goes on. And if we are prepared, we can find a sense of happiness and normalcy once again. How great a message is that for anybody thinking about life insurance, or insurance of any kind? State Farm, once again, I must tip my hat to you on a job very well done.
But State Farm is hardly the only insurer on the airwaves these days. Maybe it's just me, but I'm seeing an awful lot of insurance advertising on the small screen, and more and more, it's selling life insurance and retirement planning. This is a good thing; the industry needs to spread the word about its products. But advertising life insurance is a tricky thing. It's one thing to get folks thinking about their retirement. We all want to retire and we want to make sure we've got the money to do it; the biggest hurdle there often is apathy. Folks may want to do something about it, but they are afraid to take that first step. Fair enough. But that is nothing compared to the inertia of getting folks to take life insurance seriously. While a lot of folks seek it out after a major life event, such as a child being born or buying a house, even still, life numbers remain far lower than what they ought to be. Part of it is how insurers themselves get folks to think about the product.
American Family Insurance takes its own ads seriously, and uses the need for life insurance as a way to tell stories, as it does in this effective piece, which you can either view on the American Family Insurance video vault, or over on YouTube as part of the LIFE Foundation's efforts to promote those who tell the most compelling stories about the power of life insurance. (By the way, if you want more people to watch your videos, when you upload them to YouTube, don't request to turn off embedding.)
This is good stuff, hitting the very serious and heartbreaking effects of loss, but also underscoring the gift of love that is life insurance. There is a documentary-like tone here that gives this story its much-needed authenticity. The length of it, at nearly four minutes, however, renders it unusable as a TV ad or even a movie trailer ad. As part of an online effort, though, this works nicely. What I like most about this, though, is that rather than going after the heartstrings (as I have lauded those Thai mini-dramas for doing), it focuses on how life insurance can be the deciding factor on maintaining income for a family that will sorely need it.
As a testimonial, this works, but I often finding myself thinking that testimonials are probably not the best way to get people to start the process of buying life insurance. For that, the ads need to be a little more creative. And one campaign that sticks out in my mind is Lincoln Financial's "future self" ads that ran a few years ago. The idea behind them was pretty simple: a person who is an ideal life insurance customer is counseled by themselves from many years down the road on the wisdom of future planning. It's a bit like if Rod Serling had gotten into the ad business. Take a look:
I like this an awful lot, because it tells a story from a different point of view, and it taps into that sense of regret one has when they realize too late that they should have insured something, but didn't. Only instead of guilting the audience over it, this ad takes a positive spin and one's future self congratulates the present self for doing the smart thing, which inevitably yields great reward. That is great storytelling and emotional engineering. In this particular ad, though, it does go a little sideways since the future self angle raises the kinds of snarky retorts you're likely to find in the comment section of a YouTube video: if the guy is from the future, why does he tell himself to buy an annuity instead of giving him tips that would ensure a far greater fortune on the stock market? More substantively, seeing one's baby being born is typically a call to buy life insurance, not a call to kickstart your retirement, so we've got a mixed message going on here.
That nitpicking aside, though, this was a good campaign, and I would like to see its return. I think there is a lot of promise in it, though I must admit I don't know how well the ads did when aired. If they were not super successful, I'd love to know why, because as ads go in general, these were cool, and as ads go for this industry, they were really cool.
A better approach, I think, is to do what Aviva UK did a few years back and respect the separation of church and state, as it were, and focus its advertising specifically on either life insurance or on financial planning, using gravity and solemnity (with a touch of "trust us, we know what's good for you") to promote life insurance products while going for a genuinely sweet and humorous approach when selling financial planning. The video below offers both in a single viewing. Have a look.
Both ads are good, but that second one does me in. I just love it because I just love the characters in it. A common criticism of Boomer-age retirement expectations by Generations X and Y is that Boomers tend to act as if a lifetime of wealthy idleness has been their birthright. While the Boomers reeled when their retirement plans tanked following the stock shocks of 2008 and 2009, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't more than a little schadenfreude from younger generations who have come to see the children of the so-called Greatest Generation amount to the Selfish Generation.
That is a broadside that is both over-reaching and unfair, but I think that if the attitude taken in this Aviva UK ad – that these are people who, after a life of working hard can finally enjoy themselves – is likely to be an effective one on two fronts. First, this is just good advertising. But also, it sends a peripheral message to younger viewers that retirement planning isn't just some effort by older people to take the markets for a ride. It's a serious thing that should be started early. We all know the scary part about being a Wal-Mart greeter on your 70th birthday. But enjoying one's autumn years under a sense of reward rather than entitlement is a subtle difference that is worth selling to tomorrow's financial planning customers, many of whom are pretty cynical about financial markets in general. To that end, showing a little humanity goes a long way. When the husband admits he's been thinking about getting a bike for a long time, we feel it. And when the wife has to help her husband squeeze into his riding jacket, there is a touching honesty there that makes you really hope that their weekend ride is a good one. Good stuff, this.
What you don't want to do, is something like this, from BeamaLife, which uploaded this time last year:
Ugh. Let me be clear: ads that try to break down the details of how life products work is never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER going to work. Not ever. I write about this stuff for a living and even I could hardly sit through this ad. How is somebody cold to life insurance expected to warm up to the notion after watching this? To be fair, I'm sure BeamaLike was just trying to address a serious concern: that people don't understand how life insurance works. But unfortunately, ads like this kind of play off like how Ross Perot's efforts to win the Presidency by way of pie charts. It's a good idea in a perfect world where people make decisions with their heads. But in advertising, they make them with more instictive methods, and for that, you need ads that strike a different nerve. We saw it with State Farm, with American Family Life, with Aviva UK and with Lincoln Financial. But there's one more that's worth mentioning. It was not an American ad, but man, does it get points for using the one thing we almost never see in life insurance advertising: humor.
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