Onlia is building on the success of its brand awareness efforts with a new iteration of its “I Went Online With Onlia” platform, launching new multichannel creative to bolster it.

The new creative follows on the heels of last year’s successful push, which was a pivot away from a more performance-driven marketing strategy to one focused on building brand awareness and consideration. Those efforts – which also represented a shift in communications strategy away from the safety-dominant messaging of the brand’s early years to ads more focused on ease of use and convenience – laid the groundwork for record sales for the brand in 2022.

This year, Onlia – which is a challenger in Ontario’s $71 billion property & casualty insurance market – wants to make an even bigger splash.

“Last year when we launched our new integrated campaign, I fought tooth and nail to get as much budget for above-the-line marketing to drive the message from an awareness standpoint,” explains Julia Stein, Onlia’s director of marketing and communications. “At the end of the day, we’re on the hook for sales and people typically assume that performance media drives that. But we’ve seen that when we spend more on awareness and education with our straightforward messaging, we get stronger response in all of our channels and in sales.”

The brand is adding digital and OOH to its media mix, which will continue to include the flagship TV and radio spots developed by Blackjet and launched last year. The new elements, also developed with Blackjet, include three new, 15-second spots and a range of other digital and OOH assets – the digital elements launched last week, while the OOH is set to roll out in May.

Much of the new creative employs the same characters and voiceovers as the old, but it does introduce a new element – a mnemonic that closely connects Onlia’s brand name to the notion of “online insurance,” Stein says.

“We’ve worked closely with Onlia to reflect the strategic focus on the customer experience. All our communications emphasize the ease, speed and simplicity of transacting with Onlia,” explains Rob Galletta, CEO at the agency. “It’s gratifying to see the tangible business effects of the campaign and we’re excited to see how our new creative assets perform in the year ahead.”

“We’re investing more in the above-the-line awareness and consideration media so that consumers really know who we are and understand the message, and so we can disrupt in the category,” explains Stein. “We aren’t fully moving away from performance, but it works better when people understand who you are.”

True Media handled planning and buying for the campaign.