With the Paris 2024 Olympics in action, Mediaweek is catching up with the standout brand partners powering the Summer Games to hear first-hand from their marketing guns about running campaigns on the world’s biggest sporting stage. Today, we’re with Michelle Klein, chief customer and marketing officer of Nine Olympic broadcast partner, NRMA Insurance.
What does being a broadcast partner of Nine’s coverage of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024 mean for NRMA Insurance?
MK: It is the first time in history NRMA Insurance has supported a network’s Olympic and Paralympic Games broadcast. The event is universally loved by people around the world and it’s our honour to partner with Nine’s coverage, helping to bring the broadcast to Australians nationwide. As one of the world’s most iconic sporting events, this was the ideal platform for our trusted Australian brand to connect with audiences across the country at scale.
Can you walk us through your campaign for the Nine broadcast partnership? What are the key elements and what inspired the creative direction?
I am incredibly proud to be launching new positioning for NRMA Insurance as A Help Company, which will be amplified during our broadcast partnership with Nine’s coverage of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024. The creative campaign that audiences will see during the broadcast is part of an enduring platform for our brand, which is also supported by a new, differentiated visual identity.
A Help Company builds on our almost-100 year heritage of help, setting a bold declaration for how the company will deliver for its customers and communities now and into the future. The TVC launches a new era for NRMA Insurance as A Help Company by asking a single question: What would A Help Company do? Being A Help Company is more than marketing, it means taking action to educate and advocate for our customers at scale but it’s also about delivering the basics brilliantly and that’s what we wanted to capture through this new positioning and the first creative campaign that supports it.
What objectives did you set out to achieve with this campaign?
More broadly we are focused on maintaining brand love and relevance, as well as delivering a superior customer experience. Our partnership with Nine’s broadcast of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024 is an opportunity to reach a national audience at scale, which aligns with our objectives to connect with and help more Australians across the country.
What is the weighting of your media mix, and what has driven this decision?
We are working in true partnership with Nine to leverage their entire ecosystem. Our media mix touches every channel including broadcast TV, BVOD, radio, press and digital. We want to amplify our new positioning of A Help Company at scale so there is a heavy focus on screen-led media across broadcast TV and BVOD to ensure we land our message during a key cultural event that millions of Australians will be tuning in for.
Within our media mix across screens, we have accounted for the continuing consumer trend of viewers watching content via BVOD, in particular on demand. The 9Now BVOD experience allows users to control their Olympic and Paralympic Games viewing experience and also allows brands to be front and centre when the audience may be catching up on key moments from the overnight broadcast.
Do you believe FTA TV coverage is still an important part of a campaign?
Broadcast TV is still an important part of the campaign. There is no doubt that audience screen consumption is fragmenting to on-demand digital services and our media approach has catered to this trend. However, we know that sport is the main property that Australians tune into at scale via FTA linear TV coverage.
The Matildas semi final broke viewership records last year and was a clear indication that audiences still turn up to watch key cultural sporting events via FTA TV. Broadcast FTA TV has the unique ability to drive mass reach to an entire metropolitan or regional TV signal via ad placement.
What aspect of this campaign and partnership are you most proud of?
A Help Company is a big and different proposition, yet completely linked to where we’ve been. Consumers understand it and it taps into our values and heritage. This goes beyond marketing, it is a signal to our customers and communities for how we are going to help them now and into the future and it cuts across every touchpoint. I’m incredibly proud of how our teams internally have galvanised around this proposition and what it represents for our people. To bring it to life through our broadcast partnership with Nine’s coverage of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024 is a significant opportunity for NRMA Insurance to communicate our message at scale.
How do you plan to build upon or expand this campaign moving forward?
The new positioning highlights the ways NRMA Insurance helps its customers through its core products and services as well as its education, social impact and advocacy initiatives to create more resilient communities in the face of increased extreme weather events.
Last November we launched Help Nation, an initiative to educate Australians about their local risks and how to prepare for extreme weather. To help do this, we’ve proudly partnered with Australian Red Cross, Lifeline Australia, and South Australian SES.
We’re also introducing new customer experiences such as a Policy Snapshot to provide customers with helpful information about our policies.
We will continue to explore other new initiatives and experiences. Because that’s what A Help Company would do.
How does this campaign align with NRMA’s broader marketing strategy?
As we embarked on this journey of building on our almost 100-year heritage to charter the future, we wanted to use this moment to communicate key customer benefits and deliver a message that would stand out from the usual sporting themed tropes which can become a very cluttered environment. Our goal in launching NRMA Insurance as A Help Company is to go beyond category norms by sharing the customer benefits that come with a business that is obsessed with helping customers every single day.
See also: NRMA repositions as ‘A Help Company’ via Accenture Song
Top image: Michelle Klein