Manulife is focusing on preparedness with “Are You Ready?” — a national campaign that urges Canadians to reflect on the unexpected events that life can bring.
The campaign launched in English Canada on Jan. 26 with three TV spots titled, “The Ride” “The Call” and “The Meeting.” The ads were developed for the U.S. market by Hill Holiday on behalf of John Hancock (the U.S. division of Manulife Financial) and ran throughout December and January south of the border.
According to Jeronimo De Miguel, vice-president, branding and creative at Manulife, there were “enough similarities between the two countries” to bring the same creative to Canada. The financial services company added to the campaign with two French and English spots that were developed with its Canadian agency of record, DentsuBos and are currently running in Quebec.
Those ads, called “The Talk” and “The Door,” will roll out in English Canada on March 9.
The 30-second commercials are structured as teasers, directing viewers to manulife.ca/ready, where they are presented with three alternate endings.
In “The Talk” a woman opens an envelope, walks over to her husband, and says “We need to talk.” In ending number one, its good news- they’ve been accepted as adoptive parents. The second ending sees the man suggest his wife’s elderly mother move in, while the third concludes with the couple discovering their daughter has gotten into law school.
Each ending closes with a statistic, such as “Average cost of post-secondary education: $58, 000,” and “Average cost of raising a child to the age of 18: $254,000, and drives viewers to the site to find out how Manulife can help Canadians prepare for the unexpected.
“Psychologically the idea of a cliff hanger is a nice opportunity to suggest that you don’t know entirely what life can bring, and we want to highlight the level of uncertainty-within reason- with what life can bring,” said De Miguel.
“We liked the idea of choosing your own adventure, the notion that once you land on the site you get a chance to watch different endings because it allows us to say, different scenarios will play out depending where you’re at in your life, and therefore different products and services can be tied to those scenarios.”
Though the financial services giant has focused on preparedness in the past, De Miguel said the aim of “Are You Ready?” is to push that idea a little further. And unlike previous campaigns, which have targeted the boomer generation, “Are You Ready?” is more inclusive, and is directed at Canadians between 35-65.
“The main key here is to move beyond the idea of raising awareness of what preparedness can do, and really putting a mirror in front of people and saying, are you ready? Are you ready for all the different things that can happen in your life? The next step that we may take beyond this point is to move towards more of a message around empowerment, and you can see some of that happening in the creative.”
There’s also a significant OOH component to “Are You Ready?” with billboards and a Union Station domination in Toronto in addition to placement in Vancouver’s Gastown and Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport in Montreal.
Results since the campaign launched in January have been positive, with 50% of total projected impressions and 55% of projected clicks to the site after the first three weeks in market. On average, consumers are spending more than three minutes on the site.
The media buy, handled by MindShare, also includes digital and social.
“Are You Ready?” runs until the week of April 20.
