Life Direct Insurance: RIP Simon

Life Direct, a life insurance comparison site in New Zealand, encouraged Kiwis to compare and buy life insurance with the brand by killing off its brand mascot, Simon the sloth.

Executive Summary

R.I.P. Simon: Giving a brand a new lease of life, by publicly killing its mascot.

Life Direct is NZ's leading life insurance comparison site, and Simon the Sloth had been the brand's mascot for nearly a decade. The challenge for Life Direct was to create relevance, particularly among the under 40's: a group that is under-insured, just when they most need to be thinking about life insurance.

Life Direct needed to break free from the category 'blandtage', and get this audience up close and personal with the main thing missing from life insurance…

Death.

So we killed Simon....

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