A cautionary tale of ‘Bargain Regret’ in AAMI’s new campaign via Ogilvy Melbourne
The latest AAMI campaign via Ogilvy Australia, Melbourne, taps into the universal insight of the tantalising lure of a bargain, only to reveal that going too cheap may end up costing you more in the long run.
From popcorn exploding vacuums to rogue smoking Stairmasters, the 60 second launch film comically showcases the repercussions of going for the cheapest option. Each scene builds the momentum and heightened sense of calamity to finally land the message that when it comes to insurance, cheap deals unfortunately may have much bigger consequences.
Says Lenna Boland, group creative director, Ogilvy Australia, Melbourne: “We’ve all gone down the path of thinking we’ve scored an unbelievable deal, only to be left with a dreaded feeling of disappointment when it all goes wrong. The promise of cheap and cheerful, unfortunately, often ends with a painful ‘should have known better’ feeling. That feeling is Bargain Regret. And this is the basis of AAMI’s cautionary insurance tale.”
Says Rapthi Thanapalasingam, head of mass brands and sponsorships, Suncorp Group: “Bargain Regret is such rich territory and something we can all identify with. Vacuum cleaners are one thing, but when it comes to the important things, like insurance, we wanted to remind people that it pays to have a closer look. To think twice about the real value your insurer offers. But, to do so in a typically entertaining, playful and engaging AAMI way.”
Adds Ryan Clayton, creative director, Ogilvy Australia, Melbourne: “The moral of AAMI’s Bargain Regret story is simple: don’t go cheap on the important stuff.”
Says Mim Haysom CMO/EGM brand and marketing, Suncorp Group: “Since launching our AAMI Does platform, we’ve reasserted AAMI as Australia’s leading national insurer by showing Aussies we do things other insurers don’t, and we deliver when it counts. We’re excited with this next evolution of our brand platform and to continue the great momentum we’ve built to date.”
The campaign launches nationally in major broadcast channels, in conjunction with special build OOH and contextual digital & social placements, and comes as AAMI continues to lead the Australian insurance sector as the most considered brand nationally, now 12 percentage points higher than any other insurer.
Client: AAMI (Suncorp)
Mim Haysom: CMO/EGM Brand & Marketing
Rapthi Thanapalasingam: Head of Mass Brands & Sponsorships – Brand & Marketing
Toby Gill: AAMI Marketing Manager
Alexandra Davey: AAMI Marketing Lead
Agency: Ogilvy Melbourne
Executive Creative Director: David Ponce de Leon
Group Creative Director: Lenna Boland
Creative Director: Ryan Clayton
Head of Production: Susannah George
Head of Strategy: Virginia Pracht
Group Account Director: Angus Pearce
Senior Account Director: Benedict Smith
Account Director: Kirstie Ly
Senior Account Manager: Cherry Lin
Social Creatives: Julia Stretch & Robbie Ten Eyck
Creatives: John Barrett & Liam Ratliff
Head of Print Production & Studio: Brendan Hanrahan
Studio: Lok Leung, Gabbie-Joy Ocello & Kat Barlow
Production Company: AIRBAG
Director: Uncle
Executive Producer: Martin Box
DOP: Aaron McLisky
Production Designer: Steven Jones Evans
Stills
Photographer: Hugh Peachey
Post-Production
Offline Edit: ARC Edit
Offline Producer: Freya
Editor: Graeme Pereira
Post-production: Fin Design & Effects (VFX & Flame)
Colour: Edel Rafferty
Sound & Music
Music: Otis Studios
Sound: Joe Mount @ Electric Sheep
Casting: Stevie Ray
63 Comments
Doesn’t that look just like that budget direct ad with the dog?
Good stuff Ryz and Len!
I’d love to know the colour used to paint the repaired house???
What data proves this is in any way factual. I’d love some number.
Last aami stuff was cheese. This works in a more subtle, minimal and muted way. Pat on the back to creatives, production, director, dop and especially the production designer.
This seems like a very expensive way of saying ‘we’re very expensive’
Seems as though an AI bot wrote and directed this. Every scenario is expected and seems sooo familiar, like it’s directly lifted from other ads. Buster Keaton house topple scene you see coming from a mile away. It looks good. Production design, cinematography and effects lift it. That’s to be expected if you have a decent budget?
Do all comedy ads in Australia look and feel the same lately?
That all said, good to hear a different kind of VO for Australia. 6.5/10
Righto AI AD CREATION so picky! I think it’s a great ad…. Every time I see it I think “how the hell did they do that!?!” I know it’s probably CGI, but when the front wall of the house falls (and they later hoist it back up) it looks so real! Bloody brilliant! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼😀
Great work Ryza and Len.
Who does the voice over? Sounds a bit like David Walliams
The actor looks like Edi Christine Patterson – could that be so?
The ad is fine for what it is. However, when a category leader knocks its’ competitors, it negatively effects the entire category. Many will simply see the ad and think of what AAMI doesn’t cover. If what AAMI infers is true it would’ve been better off doing a massive PR campaign; produce a report, publish the results and perhaps launch a ‘No Surprises’ Guarantee. As it stands – it’s simply a nicely produced ad based on a negative that some AAMI customers might say AAMI has been guilty of itself.
Absolutely NOTING engaging about this spot and what’s with the VO talent?
Lucky I’m NOT with AAMI
You okay?
I’m good, thanks for asking
@AI ad creation?
Why would they go for situations consumers couldn’t relate to? The entire point of the campaign is to highlight the terrible feeling of bargain regret we experience in the everyday.
Apologies but you’re missing the point. The style, tone, shot selection of the scenes seems super familiar. As if anyone write and directed it. The vacuum and stair master scene I’ve seen before. The coffee one, the style of that shot seems also familiar. Buster Keaton is obvious, and as noted by others is similar to other insurance ads.
Strip back the production values and interrogate the proposition. This is nothing more than an attempt to defend uncompetitive premium pricing by AAMI.
Same goes for the other big establishment players.
Sewing the seeds of doubt about companies such as Budget Direct, whose premiums are less than half the big players is an obvious ploy.
I’m not a plant, I own 4 cars. I’ve recently dumped my insurer of over 30 years on 3 of those cars because my big insurer refused to grant concessions for lack of use during Covid.
Big, bloated insurers who carry huge staff overheads can’t complete with low-cost on-line insurers and they’re as worried as hell.
*Sowing. And say what you’d like, but as someone who had budget home and contents for years, the amount of cover I had to pay and the PITA to list individual items over $1000 – it came out the same when I went with another, ‘more expensive’ insurer. Not AAMI though. They’re supposed to be the cheap stablemate of GIO, which makes this ad a bit odd.
Awesome work Len and Ry — Love the VO talent and the craft on that Steamboat Bill scene.
Steam boat bill scene would be crafty if it was done for real in camera as buster Keaton did it, or i saw it done in camera on a Tom Noakes alcohol ad recently too. This is done in CG which is easy if you have the cash. So i have to disagree with the ‘craft’ comment BR.
Excellent Analysis, cheers Geoff.
@the awful truth. I had nothing to do with this but if you know anything about insurance, the cheaper the premium the more people they have to not pay out. Its simple ratios. They get told to rip off xx% of their customers (I’m sure they don’t put it that way) So their IS a point to getting more expensive insurance. I’m telling you this more so you dont get ripped off if you have to make a claim, rather than a comment about his ad. Anyway the ad seems solid to me.
They also have other expenses…. like adds
It doesn’t quite land for me – I get the cheaper products breaking faster etc but how does cheaper insurance lead to your house falling apart?
It’s a client that’s crying out for some creative direction. Feels like every campaign is just another attempt to use the AAMI receptionist characters as elf like helpers, while also pretending the repeated use of the silly dad is a distinctive assets. It’s lacking decent strategic insights and clever creative. Give that budget to Special or the Monkeys and you’d have some amazing TV. Or keep it where it is and get the same expected puns and alliteration.
This feels a little bit like student work. Sorry!
This is weird. Doesn’t do anything for me.
Isn’t this just Nick Ball work from 10 years ago?
Considering the obviously huge budget on this, it’s a missed opportunity. Agree with most of the comments above. If we’re talking about skimping on decent home and contents insurance, wouldn’t it have made more sense to explore poorly paid out claims on homes in a funny way rather than talking about cheap vacuums and coffee?
Between the dad characters guest appearance, the AAMI chicks randomly dropping in and a series of comparisons (coffee beans, huh?) that have no relation to insurance.. this ad is so confused.
Otherwise.. Production design is impressive, And that’s about it.
The front falling of a house would not be a claim- unless there was an identifiable cause such as storm. The event looks like defective workmanship in the way the house was built, hence excluded under the policy.
Can the client back up the big talk?
Isn’t advertising about communication and simplicity?
I have no idea what’s happening here. You expect better from both agency & AAMI.
Here’s my issue.
There are endless possible executions for an accident-prone world where insurance goes wrong or not as advertised. Instead we are comparing insurance to minor inconveniences like cheap coffee and a vacuum cleaner… There just isn’t a connection.
The whole ad could easily be the house-falling gag and be done with it. Simple standard AAMI fare, nothing new.
Execution is passable sure – but to me most of it watches like the equivalent of adding a trombone sound to a fat man dropping his briefcase – a slight upgrade from the ‘man-getting-hit-by-football’ approach of the last round of AAMI stuff by the same team)
Sure it’s impressive they make-broken-house-go-crash but that’s just a decent budget (and also because 90% of current scripts involve people sitting on a couch).
Are they implying you can purchase AAMI cover after your house falls down and they’ll fix it for you?
is that the scenarios in this feel so first thought, so expected, so familiar, so seen 1000 times in ads and average comedy films, that the script may as well have been written through machine learning – right down to the music choice, which is a banger, but has been overused.
re: the middling scenarios.
it’s ok, we all do it. but it’s our job as creatives to craft the work so we don’t put out work with “man bends over in new suit and splits trousers” gag.
a good cd would’ve kiboshed this and the stair master gags.
it would also be more rewarding for the creatives to have gone through more rounds of scripting to make the jokes better. unless this is what they really like, in which case – that’s ok, that’s their taste.
a better director would’ve built on the scenarios and proposed new ones that pushed the humour past bleeding obvious gags.
(perhaps it was researched and scenarios were fixed in place?)
but again, if uncle is happy with pants splitting jokes – then that’s fine, too.
this ad is fine, it’s perfectly serviceable. but it is the definition of average as a piece of communication and as another commentator said, AAMI must really think people love their aami gals and that chubby bloke. maybe they do?
and as another commentator said, imagine what a more creatively demanding agency would do with this brand and budgets. insurance is one of the few categories that has proper tvc coin and does ongoing brand work. so it’s an opportunity, for sure.
in this anon’s opinion the budget direct work trounces it from an idea and scenario point of view. also, it’s charming. this isn’t, at least to me. but we all have different takes on the work and what’s good and isn’t eh so good to discuss?
Sometimes first thoughts happen because that’s all anyone allocates to work these days. It’s a shame. It spends months in strategy getting kicked around, weeks with the suits and traffic then with the amount of internal reviews, ‘check-ins’ and suits / planners playing creative, it only gets hours of proper creative thinking. When the industry is churning out stuff like this, not just one agency, I think the agency that changes their process to something a bit more old-school will win the race. Where do you make margins? Try having 4 creatives on a brief and 2 suits instead of 4 suits and 2 creatives.
I think this is great. I’d be happy to have made this. Love the ‘You’re so Cool’ music reference too.
I hear all sides the argument and understand how work like this makes it out of the agency.
What I don’t understand is why does the front of the house fall off?
Pray Tell.
then go work overseas. any good client in the UK or US will see through this and go “well they don’t get their market.”
also Aussie accents dont suck. they do if you have the imagination of a goldfish.
make it work. stop just sucking the schlong of other countries. be a better director.
Agree above. But difficult when creatives look at overseas ads and just want to outright copy them. Then you have inexperienced directors here who also can’t think any further than outright copying what happened overseas 3 years ago. We can make an australian accent interesting if we want, we choose not to though. We often choose not to think for ourselves. That’s the Australian way.
What’s with the negativity – non-advertising people will like this.
Not good, not bad. Surprised it gained this many angry comments to be fair, go touch some grass.
What is up with people in this industry who throw their toys out of the pram as soon as they hear a ‘foreign’ voice on tv or radio?
Or, God forbid, has the temerity to use an overseas director?
Get over yourselves. It’s good to hear something different once in a while. Stop being so protective and self-referential.
It doesn’t mean Aussie voices are bad, it’s not an insult, just someone trying to convey a different take on things.
This ain’t an overseas director.
Problem with using overseas directors is sometimes they don’t give a fuck about our little aussie ad. The creative and budgets are frankly beneath them. They only do it for fun and some extra pocket change… sometimes maybe for a holiday to Australia. I actually think that little aussie mentality is the thing that makes creatives go oooh we should use a big overseas director cause that will make our ad better. When it often does the opposite.
@little aussie
If you read the comments above…The commenter involved in the job said the director ‘wanted to look good overseas / Aussie accents suck’. No one is throwing their toys out of the pram, it just seems to have been confirmed as a pretentious aesthetic choice.
non-advertising people will love and remember great work, maybe even tell their friends/co-workers/family “did you see that ad?”, and even share it with them. they might then like the brand more and this might influence their purchasing decision.
vs “yeah the punters will like it” which seems to be the standard response for every piece of middling work around these parts.
this is an industry blog; horrible sniping aside, it’s good to talk about the standard of work, to aim high, to win awards (not for awards’ sake but to show Australian advertising can be as good as anywhere), and be proud of what we do professionally.
again- the people who worked on this are surely happy with it, and I don’t begrudge their happiness. but this anon would love to make the kind of work you see coming out of uncommon London or Adam& eve or mother – big brand, populist work that’s memorable, crafted to the 9s and clear and effective advertising.
The punters / idiots will love it? So I’ll write an idiotic ad and get an idiot to direct it because that will equal idiots liking it? Is that where we’re at?
Just want to know if it’s David Walliams who does the voiceover for these adds
I think 💭 the voiceover is Alan Davies of QI fame
When the front of the house is falling, the lady ducks to go through the door space but when we go to the next shot, the lady actually is standing in the higher window not the doorway – got that wrong didn’t they
Thought I was the only person to spot this rubbish. Certainly creative.
Where was the street scene filmed?, it doesn’t look like Australia there are no fences between properties or verandas.
Insurance is already fear-based advertising (ie avoid bad outcome by choosing insurance). They are taking this to the next level by suggesting we should be fearing other insurers. I don’t love that.
How did they do the house-fall? Did the actor really stand there as it came down around them, or was it CGI? And why did they duck as if they knew it was coming?
Search on ‘buster keaton house fall stunt’
… Looking at this picture plus the TV ad — I would not like to use them for my house repairs. I did wonder what sort of glue they used to hold that wall back up — I wonder what they would say – BE WARNED …
When the front of the house starts falling over the lady she is in the door frame of the bottom storey. But when the front is on the ground she miraculously is in the upstairs window frame.
Get the continuity correct pleaseeeee.
Looks like the smashed wind screen in one of the adds is a pedestrian hit.
Specifically their head. I can’t believe they thought this was a good idea.
How else apart from maybe a motor bike rider would you cause this kind of impact