Intact Insurance has revisited its branding, evolving several elements in a bid to better deliver its message and enhance its emotional connection with clients.

“It really starts with our core belief that insurance is not about things, but about people. That’s what we try to convey in our communications,” Humberto Valencia, VP of marketing for the insurer, tells strategy. “Even though consumers enjoyed our ads and understood them and they’ve been working well, we’re always trying to outperform.”

The evolution stems from a competitive review of the industry and how it communicates with consumers, Valencia says. Through that process it “saw a clear opportunity to stand out,” he added. “Most of the category talks about damages and claims. We wanted to break out from that because we’re so much more. We can contribute to the client’s happiness in many more ways.”

This is also in part because Intact has had a role in that sea of sameness in the past, having spent several years heavily focusing on its claims process and demonstrating its strength in that area. Now, Valencia says, “the customer knows that about us,” so the brand can take greater liberty in its communications and focus on other areas, such as its role in prevention.

The refresh spans several elements of the Intact brand, including its recognizable brackets (which are also incorporated into its logo), the colour palette it uses in advertising, and the imagery employed in those ads.

Through the evolution, the brand has given its brackets “freedom of movement and multiplication,” Valencia says, allowing them to expand or contract as needed or even act in multidimensional ways in advertising imagery.

This, paired with an expanded palette of colours, allows Intact to shift the role of the brackets and have them sit more in the background – so now they can adjust based on the needs of the customer featured in the spot, which is also “what we do as a company. It’s not just an advertising device,” says Valencia.

The brand evolution was designed with creative partner Cossette, and began rolling out across TV and OLV, cinema and OOH (including billboards and bus shelter ads), first in Quebec on Sept. 4, and then across English Canada on Sept. 11.