Published on
June 24, 2024
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Welcome to the Breakdown, a weekly roundup of the best real-life marketing examples, created for marketers and agency folk that want to create work that actually works.
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In this Breakdown, we’re looking at ✨ small insight, big idea ✨ - the work that springs from a lovely little packaged insight, but leads to something big. It’s the planner’s dream. Something smart, sharp and observant being the starting point for something that gets a sh*t-ton of media spend.
For spilled pints, there is now a saviour.
Publicis London launched a campaign with Heineken called “HeineCare” - an insurance policy for your pint. They claim it’s the world’s first policy of its kind.
The campaign – which is taking placed on social media and out of home – “is based on the insight that beer often gets spilled in pubs during football tournaments”, according to Campaign.
I kinda doubt that. I know it’s insane to guess and assert what the people working on this campaign thought of. But I cannot imagine a world where this campaign didn’t start with the insight that it has become an English(?) tradition to launch your pint if England score a goal. Pints get spilled all the time. Pints get “yeeted” at very specific moments. And the Euros is one of them.
Everyone in the industry has had at least one advertising idea that involves giving away free stuff. That’s because most people working in advertising don’t work for the business, they work for the brand. But every now and again, some ideas just make so much sense that they might be worth giving away free product. Like it or not, people binge drink when the football is on. Heineken and every other lager brand probably look at football tournaments the same way a lion looks at a wounded gazelle. The goal is to take up as much share of people’s drinking as possible. Giving away a free pint, but only after someone has bought a Heineken, actually might work. Two Heinekens down (one that’s been launched at a Jude Bellingham goal, one that was free) - what’s your third pint going to be?
I’m certain I’ve seen this idea before, I just can’t remember where. It’s brilliant, even if it isn’t entirely original.
Chester Zoo have a new summer campaign, leading with the line, “One zoo. Endless adventures”. It’s a pretty tame line, as much as some of the animals living inside the zoo, you’d imagine.
But the execution is 🤌
In the OOH, we look at a few people’s phone photo album things - you know, the endless scroll of all the photos you’ve taken. And each one is different. Obviously.
The insight is of course that everyone has a different, unique experience at Chester Zoo, and your photos, a proxy for your memories of the day, will be different to everyone else’s.
But I love the tiny, tiny insight that photos in your phone are practically organised by colour. When you want to find your beach pics, you scroll as fast as you can until you get a glimpse of white sand and blue sea, repeated 30-50 times in a grid. Nights out are dark, with reds and purples and pops of light or faces. Fancy dinners out are moodily-lit, speckled with the reds, yellows and greens of whatever you ate.
And the OOH at least, captures this to a T. Like I said, it’s tiny. But it adds some kind of realness - like this could be someone’s phone we’re seeing. Maybe it actually is.
I don’t know if this idea is completely original. But it’s a lovely execution on a small insight into what a day at the zoo looks like. Nothing else to say from me, it’s just some satisfyingly good work.
The kind of insight that makes you think, “How did I not realise this?”
While the Euros is on, two campaigns, one created by Women’s Aid and the other by Solace and the National Centre for Domestic Violence, have launched - highlighting the fact that domestic abuse can get considerably more severe during football tournaments. There is a 38% increase in reported incidents whenever the England men’s team loses a major tournament.
As I said, this isn’t a small insight. It’s a huge, important, significant one. But it’s also dazzlingly simple. To those of us fortunate to have never experienced domestic abuse, there’s something obvious about relationship between the caricatures of those who perpetrate domestic abuse and the general disappointment or anger that England losing creates. Maybe those caricatures aren’t particularly helpful for solving the wider problem, but they are helpful for joining the dots for everyone who will be focused on the football this month.
Both campaigns borrow from football language, one called “No more years of hurt”, the other called “No more injury time”. Usually a brand would be disheartened to have their campaign line overlap so much with another similar brand’s, but in this case, it only makes the message louder. No bad thing at all.
Maybe this can’t even be called an insight. The data speaks for itself, very little assembly required. But it does have that insight-ish feeling of “this is so obvious, why wasn’t this a part of my understanding of the world.” The campaigns themselves don’t need any commentary - they’re happening across social, digital, OOH, probably others. Brutally simple one-liners, and this cold, hard fact about what goes on when the football is on.