Fully integrated TV campaign launches
The Black Hole, one of the UK’s leading independent response agencies, has created a fully integrated TV campaign for Northern Ireland’s biggest high-street insurer. The campaign for Open & Direct Insurance, part of Swinton Insurance, will launch Northern Ireland’s hottest ever insurance deal – by offering customers a cracking deal plus up to £100 cashback on their cover.
It’s an offer well overdue for the people of Northern Ireland. They’re not used to getting a good deal. And the conditions are primed to launch a gutsy campaign and create lots of noise. So Nick Bowyer, Marketing Director of Swinton, invited The Black Hole to produce a compelling and memorable idea for a 30 sec DRTV ad.
The creative teams went to work just before Christmas and the chosen idea (created by Lewis Gregory and James Saunders) is a parody of the 80s disco classic ‘It’s Raining Men’. The idea is all about the performance. So the Black Hole’s initial task was to find their two Weather Girls look-alikes to take to the stage with May McFettridge – Northern Ireland’s biggest panto star.
To create local awareness The Black Hole, in collaboration with SKV Manchester, developed a pre-launch campaign involving May McFettridge and 40 dancers in a flash-mob stunt outside Belfast Town Hall www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_IcoE8Sngk – and a tour of Northern Ireland’s Open & Direct shops, email and DM activity.
It was also important to co-ordinate all media activity prior to launch. So the Black Hole also worked closely with TCS Media, so that on launch day 16th April, everyone in Northern Ireland woke up to 48 sheets and press ads featuring May McFettridge and Northern Ireland’s hottest insurance deal yet. All Open & Direct shop windows were wrapped in teaser vinyls and impactful POS.
The 30 sec TV slot aired that evening in between Coronation Street. In-bound calls are already up by 50% in the first week. Customers are able to engage with the campaign online by viewing the ‘The Making Of… Raining Cash’, all three 30 sec TV slots, download the Raining Cash ring tone for their mobile – and follow May McFettridge at openanddirect.com
Lynne Cook, Head of Strategy and Planning at The Black Hole said, “It’s been a mammoth effort all round and a huge achievement, considering the budget we had to work with. We needed to get into the heads of the Northern Irish people and understand that DRTV ads in Northern Ireland are completely different to that of the mainland. They’re all about the craic, they’re disruptive and we needed to create something that people would be talking about down the pub with affection”.
Karl Stones, Creative Director at The Black Hole said “It’s taken nearly 4 months to complete; we’ve spent over two weeks rendering the falling CGI coins; re-created an iconic disco track that hadn’t been used in any advertising before – and essentially shot a funny 30sec pop-video that works seriously hard to get the response the client needed. The result is something we can all be proud of and the teams have done a great job bringing this idea to life”
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