The Brief

Let us ask you an uninteresting question. When is your car insurance due? No idea? Don’t care? You’re not alone. Car insurance is only thought about in a four week renewal window. With only this timeframe, how could GIO ensure it was talking to the right customers at the right time to switch? GIO were facing huge competitive challenges-more providers than ever and cheaper deals commoditising the category. An obvious quick fix would be direct response strategy. We went one better: achieve results of direct response while gaining top of mind status–in a way no other insurance company had attempted. GIO’s “Get in first at renewal time” meant ‘top of mind, all the time’ but you run the risk of digital retargetting stalker behaviour, eventually leading to consumer fatigue of message. If we could land a meaningful message at a precise time, consumers would respond. In order to stay top-of-mind, we needed an individual tailored personal reminder when they were thinking about car insurance, regardless of what time of year. People had moved from Post-it sticky notes, to digital reminders. The technology was built-in, we just needed to harness it for our purposes.

No piece of technology is more a consumer extension than their mobile phone - with them all the time, their social network, increasingly ‘first’ screen for media, calendar and “to-do” list. 79% of consumers agree, their mobile is “never off” (Nielsen). We needed people to invite GIO into their mobile phones, to be on that to do list. In fact, why not bypass the to-do list and create a digital reminder for them? When the perfect media solution doesn’t exist-you invent it. Australia’s first mobile “Post-it Note,” an always on personal reminder from GIO at renewal time, answering both problems: 1. “Always on”. The mobile post it gives GIO a permanent place on a consumer’s phone 2. Convenient, and easy to find that is not reliant on consistent Above the Line media advertising, which is hopefully seen by people in market at the time Instead of standard banners, we ran rich media mobile banners on the highest reaching mobile sites. Ads were highly discoverable for our preferred audience, using contextual, behavioural and time-targeting. We started with 5 million impressions via mobile, set to run 40 hours per week in line with the highest converting time periods. Browsers were asked to select the date of their reminder from an expanded frame. Immediately following their selection, the Post-it was automatically transferred into the browsers’ mobile calendar via HTML5 technology as a reminder: “Get a GIO Green Slip,” complete with GIO’s contact details and invitation to click to call/get a quote online. By creating a permanent brand asset, GIO was the first option considered at renewal time. Moving away from a mass reminding approach, to precision data marketing that delivered a personal relevant message, at the right time, in a format that had never before been executed by an Australian advertiser.

The results-outstanding! The mobile Post-it notes delivering over four times more calls per dollar spent. Within 3 weeks, over 35,000 people expanded the ads and 15% of these then engaged with the reminder unit. Of those engaged, over 6% added a permanent reminder to their calendar, another 7% clicked through to the site with a 2.4% quote to conversion. After 3 month campaign, the mobile Post-it note delivered 71% of total calls and generated an effective Cost per Acquisition that was 75% lower than usual campaigns. An idea initially intended to lower cost per acquisition and drive quotes, also achieved strong brand recall as GIO became a permanent addition to customer’s phones. GIO’s brand recall peaked in October, November 2013 with position in the top 2 motor insurance brands – recall at 40% (up from 34%) By leveraging users’ strong preference and reliance on mobile phones to organise their lives, we had also successfully managed to influence their purchase decision. The biggest measure of success is that the mobile Post-it reminder campaign has become a permanent brand asset for GIO. It is now the key driver in our ‘always-on’ motor campaign for GIO CTP and continues to perform strongly.