Specialist insurer Hiscox has expanded its “The Most Disastrous Campaign Ever” marketing initiative to television, marking the company’s first TV advertising campaign in nearly a decade.
According to information released by Hiscox, the latest phase of the campaign is designed to highlight the risks faced by small businesses through advertisements that appear to malfunction in unexpected ways. The campaign builds on previous print, radio, and out-of-home executions that intentionally featured errors and mishaps to reflect the types of incidents covered by business insurance.
Created by Uncommon Creative Studio, the television advertisements depict a conventional insurance commercial that appears to go wrong during broadcast. The executions include films that glitch unexpectedly, run upside down, play with audio in a foreign language, appear at the wrong screen size, or display no picture at all.
The television launch follows earlier campaign activations that included radio advertisements recorded in the wrong language, outdoor advertising featuring deliberate typographical errors, an upside-down billboard, a damaged digital advertising screen, and a blank newspaper cover wrap intended to resemble a missed production deadline. One previous execution also staged copyright infringement involving well-known UK brands, including Specsavers, Weetabix, and Cillit Bang.
Hiscox said the broader campaign has contributed to improvements in brand awareness and online search activity, alongside record sales performance for the insurer.
Media planning and buying for the campaign was handled by Mediaplus UK. The television rollout was scheduled around major viewing events, including the closing stages of the Premier League season, new drama programming on ITV, and the television programme Gogglebox. Hiscox said the campaign will also feature during ITV’s coverage of the FIFA World Cup, supported by streaming placements across broadcaster video-on-demand, subscription video-on-demand platforms, and YouTube.
Fiona Mayo, chief marketing officer at Hiscox UK, said the campaign aims to reflect the realities of operating a small business.
“‘The Most Disastrous Campaign Ever’ has always been about showing the reality of running a small business - where things unfortunately don’t always go to plan. Launching the campaign on TV lets us bring those everyday risks to life in a vivid and memorable way. The latest executions playfully disrupt the category and remind business owners that Hiscox is right there with them, supporting them when it matters most,” Mayo said.
