Insurance is a typically low interest category, and Insurers rated lower than banks on the trust scale. We needed to find a way for NRMA to connect with Australians and earn their trust, while also communicating the value and importance of home insurance - something NRMA offered but wasn’t well known for.

Staying true to NRMA’s brand purpose of ‘Help’, our brief was for an original integrated idea that could communicate that every home is worth protecting, while proving NRMA stood for help.

The challenge was coming up with a solution that would connect with Australians far beyond the reach of a typical insurance campaign. We needed to see a big shift in how people perceived the brand.

For almost 100 years, NRMA Insurance has been helping to protect the homes of Australians. But there was one Australian’s home which was barely protected at all; the koalas.

It is estimated the lovable species could be extinct as early as 2050.

We created a major three-year tree-planting initiative ‘Home Insurance for koalas’; which we launched with an emotional film story of a boy rescuing a koala. Then we announced the films’ star “Arlo” the koala as Australia’s highest paid debut actor, donating his fee to a partner organisation- Conservation Volunteers Australia. Arlo and his handler Jarod then did a media tour, communicating NRMA’s mission, making front page news. NRMA also became the first Australian brand to partner with the Lion’s Share.

Australians do not care that much about home insurance, but it turns out they do care about koalas. We researched and found that while koala numbers were declining to dangerous levels in NSW and QLD, the public’s awareness of the issue was low.

The issue needed to be brought to the public’s attention, but we specifically also wanted to reach home owners in both states of NSW and QLD. We did this using our key campaign message “Every home is worth protecting.”

We needed an emotional story and lovable character to win our audiences hearts, while also raising awareness of an important issue, and encouraging Australians to help.

We created all the assets of the campaign working with our partner agencies to get these messages out.

Once we had cast our lovable koala, and had many consultations with his handler, we made sure Arlo would become famous as the highest paid debut actor in Australian history. This was verified with industry authorities TalentPay and 2Divas.

We reviewed the IAG Climate Action Plan and recommended a range of partnerships and initiatives that would safeguard the reputation of the brand and make the campaign genuinely impactful. A partnership with Conservation Volunteers Australia was created which saw NRMA Insurance link the campaign back to its business by planting a tree for every home policy purchased. A partnership with The Lion’s Share ensured even the media itself would donate back to animal conservation - making NRMA the first Australian brand to do so. Arlo donated his fee to Conservation Volunteers Australia to protect more koala homes like his, which united all elements of the campaign together.

Partnerships

60,000 trees planted and a total of 2,000 volunteer hours spent

Brand salience

60" and 15" films had an instant positive brand impact of 57%, well above the industry average of 38%

‘Brand I trust’ grew by +4.8% points and ‘Brand I like’ grew by +3.6% points

? 100% of the media coverage was positive-neutral in sentiment

? 97% mentioned NRMA Insurance

Reach

The campaign generated 21.4m earned global reach, smashing an ambitious target of 10m.

Earned media value of $1.15 Million

? Front-page Press coverage, twice (Daily Telegraph and The Courier Mail)

? 68 pieces of news coverage

? 365 direct brand mentions across TV, radio, press, online and social media

Instagram

? Reach: 866,200 and over 1,100 comments

Twitter

? Engagement rate: 4.4% (triple industry standards) and 1,200 retweets

Facebook

? Reach: 2.7m, 6K shares and 22.9m impressions

Website

+4 million site visits to the NRMA home page during the campaign period

Business impact

25.1% growth in Home insurance quotes (45.6% growth in Queensland, a challenging market for NRMA)

16.1% YoY growth in actual policy sales for Home insurance – surpassing benchmark by 322%The campaign drove a long-term profit of $70,003,100 at an ROI of 9.5:1