Financial & Business Products & Services, Commercial Public Services
Idea Creation
Y&R DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
The Campaign
The UAE is hot. Very hot. In a country where summer temperatures can soar above 50 degrees Celsius, Ice Cream is a popular, delicious and much needed way to cool down. However, given the heat, it also has a tendency to melt quickly, and accidents in the form of ice cream scoops slipping off their cones happen all too frequently. Our creative solution, Mashreq Ice Cream Insurance, was a relevant way of making the topic of insurance, among the world’s most boring subjects, exciting to targets. By insuring children’s ice creams for up to 10 minutes after purchase, we directly dramatized the benefits of insurance to their parents through those they loved the most, while simultaneously cutting through the red tape traditionally associated with insurance advice.
Creative Execution
We dispatched Ice Cream vans across the UAE, which insured the ice cream they sold to kids for up to 10 minutes. Whenever an Ice Cream was sold to a child, we put a Mashreq Ice Cream Insurance sticker on his or her shirt, allowing us to identify them. Given the UAE’s hot weather, even in April when the campaign was implemented, we knew that many of the kids would face accidents in the form of ice cream scoops slipping off their cones. Whenever this unfortunate happenstance befell a child, we swiftly replaced his or her ice cream with a new one, much to the delight of both kids and parents, before sharing a concise leaflet with targets in which Mashreq’s Insurance offering was further detailed.
Results
Mashreq Ice Cream Insurance saw 480 spills during the course of the campaign convert into scoop-loads of social buzz. 4800 minutes of insured peace of mind were provided for the parents of the kids who bought ice cream from our vans, and the campaign realized a 40% increase in enquiries – 30% more than the target specified by the brief. Perhaps best of all, thousands of parents got to taste the peace of mind provided by Mashreq’s offering through the excitement and delight of their children, who experienced just how deliciously satisfying it was to have their ice creams insured against accidents.
The UAE is a stepping stone. Expats comprise 84% of the UAE population, and the average professional stay is only 4.5 years. As such, insurance is not even considered by a significant number of the country’s residents, while those who do research the subject have to wade through forbidding amounts of data and fine print to learn more about the policies on offer. Through its Ice Cream Insurance campaign’s direct engagement with targets, Mashreq Bank was able to cut through the red tape and memorably dramatize the benefits of its insurance offering to those who needed it most.
Expats comprise 84% of the UAE population, and the average professional stay is only 4.5 years. Given the transient nature of the country, insurance is not even considered by a significant number of its residents. Compounding the issue, those who do show interest in insurance policies face uninspiring stacks of paperwork and fine print. Our approach sought to make the topic of insurance, among the world’s most boring subjects, exciting to targets through a particularly relevant vehicle in one of the world’s hottest countries: ice cream. By dramatizing the benefits of insurance through ice cream, the strategy identified a way of cutting through the red tape and talking directly to people’s hearts and minds, making an emotional impact that resulted in targets responding to our call to action with an unprecedented rise in enquiries.