Suncorp Group and AAMI win with Boomtown ad campaigns
The Suncorp Group and AAMI’s regional advertising campaigns have generated significant results, according to the insurance and banking group.
The announcement:
National insurance and banking company, Suncorp Group, has notched up significant results from its investment in advertising in regional Australia, pairing clever creative with audience insights for a sizeable lift in brand consideration, sentiment, and customer quotes.
The Suncorp Group and its insurance brand, AAMI undertook several campaigns targeting Boomtown, using innovative creative and messaging to capture the hearts of regional Australia and the specific issues they face.
Suncorp’s ‘One House’ campaign, which took out Cannes Lions Grand Prix for Innovation in 2022, was targeted to regional Queensland and focused on helping customers protect their homes from floods, cyclones, and fire. It came on the back of severe weather seasons in the area and the long-term social, economic, and mental health impacts witnessed from property displacement.
In a creative twist, the insurer created a prototype traditional Queenslander home, dubbed ‘One House’ which was designed to be more resilient to bushfires, floods, and cyclones. The ‘One House to Save Many’ campaign was then weaved around the house. It included a documentary, featuring regional families previously impacted by weather perils, capturing their reactions to One House and what they would do differently if they had more weather-resilient homes. Bite-size online content, TV commercials and shared IP followed.
The campaign paid customer and commercial dividends: it increased consideration of Suncorp by 10 points (+12 points with non-Suncorp customers), increased customer quotes by 25% and increased new business units by 11.1.
The group’s insurance brand AAMI also undertook two Boomtown campaigns. Its ‘Warning Spots’ campaign used AAMI’s crash index data to identify high-risk crash locations in certain regional areas prone to high traffic during holiday periods. The data was complemented with partner insights and influencer travel stories shared across social and digital channels, then tuned into a digital radio and out-of-home campaign to target consumers with safety messages as they travelled. The subsequent campaign, ‘Rest Towns,’ encouraged people to stop and rest during long-haul trips, by directing people into upcoming towns on their road trip and creating two-hour Spotify playlists, reminding drivers when to stop. This was supported with radio messaging and billboard advertising.
The results were considerable: 92% of people exposed to the ‘Warning Spots’ campaign expressed positive sentiment towards AAMI – a significant increase on base levels – and it resulted in a reduction in accident claims. For ‘Rest Towns’, brand consideration rose 3.5 points initially, and then continued to increase ‘worth’ perceptions by 6.55 percentage points.
Additionally, the campaigns encouraged safer driving, while also providing income for regional businesses still recovering from adversity.
Suncorp Group EGM of brand and marketing, Mim Haysom, said the campaign results showed Boomtown was a significant opportunity for advertising spend, and should not be discounted.
“For the Suncorp Group, it’s always been really important to us to make sure we’re educating customers all across Australia and we’re engaging and servicing them with products and services they need. As a brand, metro and regional have always been equally important to us – in some cases, even more so in regional.
“Many marketers think you’ve got to go metro and scale big to win creative and effectiveness awards and that’s not the case. We’ve found if you are targeted, bespoke, and creative you are with regional audiences, you can create really significant impact. There’s a great opportunity from a brand, business, customer, and creative perspective to be found, if you’re willing to do the work to drill in and find the insights. Plus, given the relatively low cost of media in regional areas, and the fact there are many affluent customers in several of the regional markets, it can be a really profitable opportunity. The cost of regional media, coupled with some of the ROI opportunities, actually plays out in your favour.
“Every brand will have a different experience of regional marketing and audiences. But I do suspect different nuances and insights could be tapped by pretty much every brand and every category. Think about the opportunity through the lens of the customer, and also the business opportunity. If you consider regional markets and regional audiences from the outset, there is absolutely customer growth and revenue opportunity to be had.”
Suncorp’s results come on the back of Boomtown’s new ‘Uncapped and Untapped’ campaign, designed to rally the nation’s marketers to put regional media buying on their planning agendas.
Boomtown chairman, Brian Gallagher, said Suncorp’s results show regional advertising should be a non-negotiable for brands countrywide.
“The Suncorp Group has achieved incredible results with their investment in Boomtown and their ability to mine regional audience insights and platforms to find customer growth and engagement,” he said.
“We’re encouraging other marketers across the country to follow suit and proactively build out regional marketing strategies to find growth. Boomtown is an untapped market for thousands of brands across Australia – and Suncorp’s initiatives show there is significant new customer build and revenue opportunities to be had.”
Source: Third Avenue Consulting
