Life insurance company, Partners Life, brought dead characters back to life in the nation’s most popular television murder mystery series, to talk to its audience about the benefits of dying with life cover. We seamlessly integrated our message into the show, before the credits, using the same actors, director, sets, and crew, for an entire season.

It was a big, audacious and provocative collaboration, with a high level of difficulty to pull off, as we took a normally boring and dull category that everyone usually wants to avoid or forget, and made it completely unavoidable and unforgettable.

When it comes to life insurance, New Zealand is one of the most underinsured countries in the world. In fact, only 29% of New Zealanders have it. So, New Zealand life insurance company, Partners Life, wanted to challenge the nation’s mindset.

However, research revealed a couple of crucial barriers:

1. New Zealand’s reluctance to engage with the category, was driven by our reluctance to engage with death itself.

2. Category drivers revealed advertising as the weakest motivational trigger. Our competitors skirted around the honest reality of life insurance, instead celebrating the ‘joy and confidence’ of being covered. This contrived truth simply didn’t resonate or motivate.

So, Partners Life needed a new approach. They needed a way to talk to its audience in their everyday lives. A voice that their audience would actually listen to or was already engaged with. All while not appearing in a classic ad/commercial sense.

We used the hindsight of the dead to convince people to take out life insurance.

Partnering with our most popular ‘murder mystery’ we demonstrated the risk of an unexpected death, by using the murdered characters as our spokespeople.

Knowing our audience’s disdain for life insurance advertising, we didn’t want to use the dead characters in a traditional campaign.

So, at the end of every episode, before the credits, we brought these murdered characters back from the dead for one ‘last performance’. Same actors, same director, same sets, for an entire season.

These characters woke from the dead to share their regrets about not getting life insurance.

Every episode offered hindsight into the consequences of unexpected death, reflective of the characters’ life.

We reminded New Zealanders that that life isn’t scripted, so it’s best to ‘Plan ahead and get life right’.

Making a category that everyone wanted to avoid, completely unavoidable.

New Zealanders won’t consider life insurance if they don’t consider death. So, we decided not to overstate the benefit of peace of mind but rather to accept the reality of what we are selling. We’re not selling life insurance, we’re selling death insurance.

While New Zealanders might struggle with acknowledging their own mortality, death is a common theme in the entertainment we consume. From true-crime podcasts to dark comedies – entertainment made the subject palatable. So, rather than use advertising to get Kiwis thinking about death, let’s activate where people are already engaging with it.

And when it comes to insurance, disasters make it tangible – An accident, break-in, illness etc. But that’s not the case for life insurance. Because when disaster strikes, it’s too late for hindsight.

Insight: Hindsight is useless when you’re dead.

Strategic thought: Partners Life is giving Kiwis the hindsight they need before it’s too late.

For a seamless integration into the show, we worked closely with The Brokenwood Mysteries’ production company. All scripts were written based on each episode’s individual storyline, taking on the tone of voice of the dead characters. They were then approved by the show’s creator and head writer, before being shot using the show’s same director, same actors, same sets, and same crew.

Ad placement was crucial. To reach our audience in an authentic way and capitalise on a captive audience, we struck a deal that allowed us to run the campaign within the show, appearing at the end of the episode as the last scene, before the credits.

The campaign ran for six weeks, inside every episode of the popular six-week series, on Free-to-air TV from 7th Aug – 11th Sep, 2022. And until the end of the year across On-Demand TV, running from 7th August – 31st Dec, 2022.

The Last Performance turned a nation apathetic to life insurance into one actively engaged with it.

- 70% of New Zealanders now believe in the ‘importance of having life insurance’

- Further to that, we have also achieved a + 9% point uplift in New Zealanders actively considering getting life insurance after seeing The Last Performance.

- Brand awareness increased to 29% - attaining the highest awareness score for Partners Life in the last three years.

- Consideration for Partners Life increased to 26% - hitting our goal. This also led to website enquires increasing by 70% from pre-campaign levels.

It is best summarised by the CEO of Partners Life:

“The Last Performance is a subversive and convention challenging campaign, using humour and integration to disrupt standard advertising in the insurance industry and encourage viewers to engage with the content, while also positively supporting our advisor network” - Naomi Ballantyne

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