As a challenger brand in growth mode, insurer Youi has unleashed a brand reset involving a new TTL campaign, an evolved brand design system and a reshaped in-house marketing model.
As a category, insurance advertising is often defined as hyperbole and fiction, presenting plenty of opportunities for Youi’s chief marketing officer, Angela Greenwood to rewrite the script.
Which is why her feet were barely under the desk when she rolled up her sleeves and announced a brand refresh in August 2022, albeit with a larger marketing budget in hand.
When hiring Greenwood, Youi management was clear that the brand’s intention was to do things differently, which then CEO Hugo Schreuder had remarked would require an innovative CMO with a passion to achieve extraordinary outcomes.
Greenwood stepped into the role in June 2022 from Optus, where she was senior director of consumer marketing and had been part of its brand refresh process. Since then, a qualified actuary has taken over as CEO when Schreuder retired from the top role. Nathaniel Simpson has worked for South Africa-based parent company Outsurance Group for 17 years.
She previously held senior marketing roles with Mortgage Choice and a UK-based digital marketing agency, where she worked with brands like Disneyland, Superdry, Randstad and Reckitt Benckiser.
Starting over
The brand refresh process, which launched in August 2022, took just over a year from the start of the brand framework definition to campaign launch, with a major transformation of the team structure and operating model along the way. “I was keen to dive into the brand DNA of Youi and develop a meaningful articulation of our brand framework, including our positioning, customer value proposition and personality,” she says.
“The core of Youi’s customer promise since day one has been our ability to lean in and understand our customers as individuals. That remains equally true today, but it’s probably fair to say that our approach to communicating that promise in recent years has lacked some of the consistency and impact of our earlier work.”
Unlike other brands its size, Youi has long operated 36-person in-house agency for both creative development and media buying since its inception, but Greenwood decided that fresh eyes were needed to ensure the brand was tackling in the right direction.
“Youi has a fascinating history and strong brand assets, so it was important to me to take the time to be very clear about how I planned to take the brand forward while maintaining what has made Youi such a unique insurance challenger,” Greenwood says.
“We’re proud to be one of the original in-house agency models in Australia that has put creativity at the heart of the business from day one, with a newly hybrid approach in place,” she says.
“Our people are our secret sauce behind what makes our brand great, and we knew our brand evolution had to be able so much more than knocking out some new ads. But once I landed into the CMO hotseat it became clear that we had outgrown the ability to handle very single task within our own walls.”
Leading change
Greenwood underwent a comprehensive three-month process to find an agency capable of developing the brand framework. The process involved in-depth interviews with a range of Youi staff members, a distinctive brand asset study and deep diving into consumer research and past campaign insights, with Re ultimately selected to work with Youi’s in-house team.
She also hired Lution to define the future structure and operating model, transitioning to a hybrid approach that would work alongside its in-house marketing team.
“We continued working with Re to evolve our brand design system, ensuring we kept our distinctive black and white core, but giving it greater breadth and the ability to stretch into interesting playgrounds.”
Greenwood also made the decision to collaborate with Resonance to develop a full sonic branding suite including a brand anthem, audio logo and new voiceover talent. “And we also partnered with BRX to drive best practice digital creative tailored to channel and placement.”
At the centre of it all, the in-house creative team landed the new campaign ‘Insurance that’s a bit more you-shaped’, which Greenwood says gives Youi a powerful, flexible and memorable platform that we look forward to carrying through our work into the future.
Ensuring that teams work in synergy so that ideation can take place in partnership with internal and external teams is critical, she says.
“I think it’s a beautiful example of the power of an in-house agency, which is so close to our business, to capture how we how we deliver on our brand promise to customers in such a simple, memorable and impactful way.”
“A wealth of insights informed a concise and impactful expression of who we are and what we stand for. From there, we rallied the organisation behind the vision, and gained buy-in from all stakeholders from frontline staff to the Board.
“Looking forward, we saw the opportunity to make our customers the centre of our brand story. The goal wasn’t to reinvent the brand, but to get back to the heart of what we’re known and loved for, and to communicate it in a way that will have longevity and cohesion,” Greenwood says.
“We knew from our brand tracking that Youi is viewed as different and innovative in the insurance category, but consumers aren’t clear on why.”
From there, the mission was clear. “We needed to ensure you.insured was the enduring bedrock and hero of our creative approach, but we also needed to give it meaning and ensure it cues more powerful associations in the minds of Australians.”
The new campaign has launched with a suite of four films across TV, with a tailored social and digital video approach and integrated across all media channels, Youi has also refreshed its brand design system and developed a comprehensive sonic branding approach, including a new audio logo.
The motivation
Insurance is an advertising category struggling more than most. Trying to retain customers determined to shop around for a cheaper policy amid rising premiums and a declining economy is tough enough for the established brands, let alone a challenger brand like Youi.
Insurance is an industry often impacted by factors outside of the control of businesses, which has meant that insurers have faced historically low profits since 2020. Home insurance is under particular pressure – for every dollar in home premiums in 2022, insurers’ costs were $1.04, according to the Insurance Council of Australia.
A number of significant extreme weather events since the Black Summer bushfires have also meant that insurers and customers have experienced several challenging years. In 2022 alone, there were more than 300,000 disaster-related claims lodged from four declared insurance events across the country, costing more than $7 billion in insured losses.
But being a challenger in growth mode, Youi has been investing back in the business, growing its marketing budget, which Greenwood expects to continually grow in years to come. The hope, she says, is that Youi can pick up some new business as cost of living pressures pushes policy holders to switch to new insurers in search of a cheaper policy with better inclusions.
“We benchmark ourselves against the competition and we want to make sure we are offering something in terms of a value proposition that will be compelling,” she says.
Greenwood says: “Our goal is to cement our position as one of Australia’s best challenger brands and I couldn’t be more excited about the road ahead. Our team, our brand and our vision are a match fit. We’re ready to tackle the next phase of growth for Youi with some great momentum behind us.
“I’m looking forward to being a part of the next phase of Youi’s impressive growth story by acquiring and retaining even more loyal customers while continuing to deliver an outstanding customer experience,” Greenwood says.
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