Mosaic appeals to millennials in facetious campaign

Individuals around the world have had a lot to contend with in 2020 – between wildfires in Australia and western parts of the U.S., the prevalence of “murder hornets” in B.C., and of course, the global COVID-19 pandemic, it hasn’t been a great year, to put it mildly.

The unpredictability of 2020, and life in general, was the main insight that led to the development of Mosaic Life Insurance’s “Protect yourself from 2020” campaign, which launched earlier this month and aims to get Canadians talking about, and considering, purchasing life insurance.

The campaign also looks to create awareness for Mosaic, which is a part of legacy insurer First Canadian Insurance and was launched just over a year ago. Created by agency Conflict, “Protect yourself from 2020” features OOH ads in markets like Toronto and Edmonton, as well as nationally-run digital ad units, with facetious headlines like “Hopefully the year ends before you do” and “A zombie apocalypse wouldn’t surprise us.”

02 Mosaic - Hopefully

According to Hafeez Kassam, COO at Mosaic Life, a general lack of people’s awareness about life insurance, or an overall unwillingness to talk about it, is one of the biggest challenges the industry is facing.

“In order to break through that, you need to get people to stop and actively think about what are the risks they face on a daily basis. And it’s not just the risk that you face today, but the risks that you face over the next 10, 20 or 30 years where you have responsibility to people other than yourself,” he says. “It requires active reflection of those risks. So the campaign needs to kind of force people to have that reflective moment.”

Kassam says younger generations are the primary target for this campaign, and that there’s a “generational gap,” in terms of life insurance awareness. Most Baby Boomers already have insurance, but many millennials have tended to delay a lot of life events (such as getting married, having kids or buying a house) and were less likely to think about protecting themselves or their loved ones, he says.

According to 2017 Environics’ research for TD, more than half of millennials (55%) do not have any life insurance; however, one-third of the demographic have thought about life insurance. The demographic is getting older and going through many of those life stages, says Kassam, which is triggering thoughts around their financial responsibilities.

The OOH media buy for the campaign was handled by Pattison and Astral, whereas Mosaic developed the paid digital and social assets in-house.

04 Mosaic - Zombie