Our research uncovered several barriers that would make life insurance advertising difficult.

1. Advertising wasn’t motivating us to act

When looking at triggers that motivate people to take out life insurance, traditional advertising ranks bottom of the list. [5]

2. NZ’s relaxed outlook makes us vulnerable

As previously stated, NZ’s cultural tendency to understate risk is a huge barrier to consideration, evident in only 29% of us having life insurance (vs. 71% of Singaporeans). [6,7]

3. You won’t consider life insurance if you don’t consider death.

Research uncovered that Kiwis’ reluctance to engage with the category, was driven by their reluctance to engage with death itself. [8]

Our challenge:

Turn a nation apathetic to life insurance into one

that is actively engaged with it through Partners Life.

Our approach was shaped by three key insights:

1. We needed to stop overstating the benefit of “peace of mind” which the category tends to focus on and embrace the honest reality of what we were “selling” – death insurance.

2. Hindsight is a powerful trigger when it comes to getting insurance more generally.

It’s often the hindsight from an accident, a break in, an illness etc. that sparks someone’s desire to act in the category. [9]

But in the case of life insurance, hindsight is completely useless because …you’re already dead!

3. New Zealanders claim they don’t want to engage in death. But that simply isn’t true.

True crime podcasts, murder mysteries and dark comedy are hugely popular genres in NZ. [10]

Entertainment makes the subject of death more palatable. So rather than use advertising to get people thinking about death, we needed to activate where people are already engaging with the subject matter.

This led to our strategy:

Dramatise that hindsight is useless when you’re dead, in places where Kiwis are already engaging with death.

THE IDEA :

‘Last Performance’

A life insurance campaign masquerading as a television series, where murdered characters wake from the dead to share their regrets about not getting life insurance.

We partnered with NZ’s most popular murder mystery show– The Brokenwood Mysteries to demonstrate the risks associated with unexpected death.


Six episodes = six deaths = six perfect candidates to articulate the importance of life insurance through the hindsight they wish they had, had.

So, we united…

a media partner, 


a television production company,


talent,


crew,


and Partners Life

…to tell the most compelling life insurance story NZ had ever seen.

In every episode someone dies and ends up in the morgue.

So, at the end of each episode, before the credits, the murdered characters woke from the dead for one ‘last performance’ offering unique hindsight into the consequences of unexpected death reflective of their characters’ life.