Why is this work relevant for Creative Strategy?

At a time when both the insurance category and consumers were suffering from the blows of 2020, Manulife launched a new critical illness product. The fears and tears often associated with critical illnesses was the last thing consumers needed. So, Manulife made a strategic decision to pivot from the category norm that instilled fear with its rising cases and instead, inspire hope and optimism by highlighting its rising survival rates. It was with this creative strategy that our campaign reframed consumers’ mindset toward the critical illness category from fearful to hopeful, and delivered business results beyond expectations.

Background

Hong Kong’s insurance category has been battered by months of external shocks, from the social unrest to Covid-19. In 20201H, the category recorded the worst slump since the 2008 financial crisis with a 34.4% drop in new product sales. Unlike most markets, Hong Kong relies heavily on mainland visitors for growth but as borders closed, Hong Kong insurers experienced a drastic 87.6% YoY decline in premiums from Mainlanders. The biggest drop was critical illness (89.6%). The sharp decline in mainland visitors had competitors focus back on domestic business, intensifying competition in an already small, saturated market. Yet the local sentiment wasn’t any better. The fear and economic uncertainty forced consumers to reassess their spending, tighten purse strings and focus only on the daily essentials. Against this challenging backdrop, Manulife launched a new critical illness product, ManuBright Care 2, with the ambition to drive brand awareness, consideration and double-digit sales growth.

The Interpretation of the Challenge (30% of vote)

Besides the macro challenges, Manulife had 2 key hurdles to overcome: 1. A small dog in the health insurance category With plentiful choices available and competitors having stronger health associations and higher media budget, how can Manulife come out top dog? 2. A “luxury” that can wait CI plans are expensive in Hong Kong. A basic CI plan can start at USD 2,500/year for a healthy 27yo female, equivalent to a month’s wage of an average Hong Kong worker. At a time when consumers were holding onto cash, and CI plans seemed like a luxury that could wait, how can Manulife provoke the urgency to purchase?

The Insight / Breakthrough Thinking (30% of vote)

To start, critical illness is a category associated with negativity, and often times, death. To make matters worse, competitors often leverage fear by emphasizing critical illnesses’ ubiquity to gain sales. Consequently, consumers grow increasingly fearful and question the need to purchase if there’s no hope. Then through Manulife’s consumer research, the brand learned that negativity had permeated through every aspect of consumers’ lives and they have had enough. So, Manulife wanted to take a different approach – to change people’s perspective; not to see fear but to instil hope. Manulife was inspired to look at CI numbers with a new perspective upon uncovering that the 5-year cancer survival rate is up to 69% as reported by the American Cancer Society. So even as the number of critical illness cases are rising, so too are the chances of survival. This was the driving insight to bringing hope to a dire situation.

The Creative Idea (20% of vote)

The Creative Idea: Increase Your Odds of Survival By anchoring on the increased survival rates and staying focused on inspiring optimism, we landed on a creative idea that was light-hearted and hopeful, yet thought-provoking. We creatively tapped into the moment that caused fear and worry for many people…the wait at the doctor’s waiting room. To execute and elevate this idea, we teamed up with Hong Kong DJ and actor, Jan Lamb, who’s known for his quick wit. He played all the characters featured in our 3 videos – the patient, the doctor, and his organs (heart, lungs, and brain) to play out the story of a patient nervously waiting for his report at the doctor’s office. Through the dialogue and interaction with his organs, we cleverly introduced how each key product feature will cover our patient’s needs in the journey of recovery.

The Outcome / Results (20% of vote)

The creative strategy proved to be effective, achieving stellar results at every level. Business Results: Beyond Expectations The campaign delivered 66% growth in Annual Premium Equivalent (APE). While key competitors recorded double-digit drops, Manulife achieved a double-digit on-shore APE growth of 10%. In 2020, Manulife leaped ahead of competitors to No.1 positioning in market share. Message Impact: Driving Prompt Action From Manulife’s post-campaign survey: 64% of respondents felt the campaign was easy to understand, 66% liked our ads (34% more than our biggest competitor), 55% were prompted to start preparing, and intent to purchase grew by 8%. Brand Impact: Climbing Higher Our campaign had a halo effect over brand affinity. Post-launch, 59% stated an overall better brand impression and brand consideration jumped to No.1, surpassing our biggest competitor. And today, people are now more prepared with an average of 1.6 CI plans owned per person.

Please tell us about the challenger brand and how your campaign challenged / was different from your competitors

Manulife is not the top-of-mind when it comes to health protection products. With many options available in the market and other brands having stronger associations with health as well as a higher overall ad spend, Manulife needed to find a way to outsmart its biggest competitor and achieve remarkable results with less ad budget. Critical illness is a category associated with negativity, and often times, death. The category’s practice in promoting critical illness products is to leverage the fear in this depressing topic, emphasize the ubiquity of developing critical illness, then highlight their product coverage to gain sales. Manulife’s campaign did quite the opposite. The campaign strategically focused on bringing hope to a dire situation by anchoring the idea on increased survival rates. This strategy elevated Manulife above the competition and allowed the brand to inspire optimism, giving the brand a distinctive place in the minds of our positive-seeking target.