New brand campaign from Hollard “gets you”

The campaign launched on Tuesday, 1 September 2009, and can already be seen on billboards in and around Johannesburg.

Explains Krisen Govender, Hollard's head of marketing and communications, “The creative concept which interprets ‘We Get You shows' confident, vibrant everyday people in the foreground, while the shadow they cast reveals that they have attitudes, opinions, hopes, dreams, aspirations and emotions, which makes them multi-faceted, surprising and unique. We encourage and celebrate that in our customers, our partners and our employees.

“Our aim was to bring our insights into people to life through imagination in the form of a campaign that brings fun into insurance advertising. This was our brief to our agency, Mortimer Harvey. We wanted to show our customers, our partners and our staff that we get them, all sides of them in a way that is positive and humorous.

“Given that the campaign has been designed for outdoor and print media, it had to be simple with minimal copy and bold visuals. It had to challenge the viewer in a way that encouraged them to interact with it again and again, the kind of campaign that gives you joy in connecting the dots after seeing a few applications.”

Images not previously seen

Louw le Roux, creative director at Mortimer Harvey, says the new campaign had to be differentiated with images not previously seen. “It had to be challenging while remaining relevant and entertaining. In short, something that redefines the staid and predictable tone-of-voice of the insurance industry in general, challenging convention in the same way Hollard does as a company.”

The challenge was to develop a new brand campaign that would meet and exceed in terms of these and other deliverables. This was achieved over a nine-month period through a strong relationship between client and agency, several focused tissue sessions, an agency that was prepared to listen and a client that was brave enough to run with a campaign that is not the norm in terms of the financial services industry.

The creative execution and final product relied heavily on the quality of the photography. It was crucial to capture the essence and emotion of real, everyday and identifiable characters - the guy next door, the lady across the street or the dude down the road.

Skills and flair

To capture all this and give the executions the true depth and interest they deserved, the agency relied on the skills and flair of photographer Michael Meyersfeld. Meyersfeld is an award-winning photographer who has been exhibiting since 1975 and has been published in The One Show Annual and the Art Director's Club (New York, 1999) and The Association of Photographers 16th and 17th Awards (London, 2000).

According to Govender, it was imperative that the brand campaign had to resonate primarily with Hollard staff and partners. “The aim was to make ‘We Get You' a customer service promise that all our stakeholders were passionate about and it was embraced with great pride, we actually branded the entire Hollard Campus in Parktown,” concludes Govender.

View the various creative elements in the new Hollard campaign [PowerPoint file].