Quite frankly, buying car insurance isn’t fun. So, belairdirect isn’t going to pretend it is.

Its latest campaign to introduce the brand, which is owned by Toronto-based ING Canada, to the Ontario market features a damaged licence plate cleverly dented to read ‘Hit happens.’

‘We just want to be real. It’s to protect you, not to sell happiness,’ says Philippe Meunier, CD at Montreal-based Diesel, taking a jab at insurance ads depicting smiling, happy people talking to overly friendly insurance reps. ‘The underline is shit happens, and one day it’s going to happen

to you.’

The ad is running across Ontario in bus shelters and in local newspapers like the Burlington Post and the Cambridge Times.

client: Denis Côté, VP marketing; Nathalie Bénard, mass communications manager; Rita Hamady, communications advisor; Evan Steenson, marketing assistant, belairdirect

CD: Philippe Meunier

copywriter: Guillaume Bergeron

AD: Jonathan Lavoie

account director: Sonya Bacon

project management: Véronique Proulx

print producer: Julie Huard

photographer: Olivier Staub