The One House to Save Many campaign has captured the creative world as a fine example of a for purpose commercial, winning an Innovation Lions Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
The jury was "blown away" by the boldness of the idea.
At This Way Up: Australia’s advertising festival of creativity 2022, Dave Bowman, head of creative at Google, interviewed a panel of creatives behind Suncorp and Leo Burnett’s One House to Save Many.
CMO/EGM of brand & marketing at Suncorp Group, Mim Haysom, national executive creative director at Leo Burnett, Andy Fergusson and associate creative director at Leo Burnett Marijke Spain spoke about the work behind the work.
Haysom spoke about the why behind the campaign, crediting Suncorp's ethos of building futures and protecting what matters.
She said: “Our purpose at Suncorp group is to build futures and protect what matters and that context is really important for the purpose of this work.
“The severity of some of the weather events that we are experiencing are only becoming more frequent and even more severe. In the last two-years alone, insurance companies paid out 8.9 billion dollars in insurance claims.
“The 2019 bushfires burnt out 60 million acres of land which is the same size as the United Kingdom, a truly disastrous event. What they proved to us at Suncorp is that we need to build homes to not only withstand the Australian climate, but also be prepared against the frequency of these natural disasters.
“As one of Australia’s biggest insurers we wanted to find a way to build resilient homes for Aussie communities. With new structural integrity and resilience, the impacts upon the home after disaster strikes should be minimal.
“The idea and solution was, of course, The One House to Save Many project. We partnered with scientists and experts to test pro-types to see what materials and structural dynamics would give homes the best chance at surviving disaster seasons.”
Spain reflected back on 2019 when the idea for One House to Save Many was born. She credits the partnership not only with Suncorp Group, but also the architects with Room 11, researchers from James Cook University and The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
She said: “This was the biggest project of my career and it happened mid pandemic.
“The idea for One House was conceived in 2019, around the time that we usually receive briefs from Suncorp to Queensland for the storm season. We really liked the One House idea and became something we worked on for 18-months.
“The Glue Society came on board with us and really helped us bring our vision to life. So, December 2019 was really where we decided to bring in partners such as Room 11 architects to find out what was manageable. They had a great portfolio with a lot of sustainable initiatives and designs, as well as James Cook University who conducted an abundance of research, which formed the scientific background for the design and resilience. I can’t credit the partners enough.
“The longer a creative piece is in the works means more curveballs are thrown in the mix, and in our case it was the 2019-2020 summer bushfires.
“Initially when we had this idea, it was not going to involve fire. It was really about storm, flood and cyclone resilience, but it became apparent that there was no way we could ignore the need for bushfire resilience and from there the creative organically grew and became all the more relevant.
“That is when CSIRO came on board to share their knowledge and expertise when it came to building fire resilient homes. We were then able to access their testing facilities in Mogo to create the best outcome of a storm, flood, cyclone and fire resilient home.
“It really was the partnerships that got the campaign moving and played an integral role in its success.”
Fergusson: “Once we went through the testing process and got the designs for all four categories of storm, fire, flood and cyclone, we had a sustainable home ready to withstand Queensland elements.
“We see it as the definition of resilient design. Simple ideas of using crimsafe screens around the home was a brilliant innovation that Room 11 came up with to defend the home against fire embers and ghastly winds.
“We never wanted this to be a costly proto-type. The point of this work was to show Australians the affordable things they can implement and install around their homes to fight back against those four ghastly elements.
“The goal was to show people that a simple trip to Bunnings could save them from losing their homes and create a strong, sustainable space for the family, built on structural integrity.
“I think with the help of Suncorp and our partners, that was achieved.”
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