Attracting a new generation of customers for Ethias
Ethias, a Belgian insurance company, offers a range of products including life, car, home, and health insurance. Their mission is to simplify insurance and become a trusted partner, providing security and peace of mind to clients across Belgium.
Business challenge
Already well-established in Wallonia, Ethias was keen on expanding its market presence in Flanders, particularly among the 18-30 age group. This segment is crucial as young customers have a significantly higher potential lifetime value. Reaching them, however, has always been a challenge. Insurance can seem complicated and full of jargon, making it feel distant and hard to understand for many young people.
To tackle this issue and successfully enter this new market, Ethias teamed up with Springbok, a marketing strategy and creative content agency. Springbok then partnered with BUFFL to ensure that the new campaigns would genuinely connect with this specific audience.
How we made the difference
In just 4 weeks, we used iterative focus groups, surveys, and an ideation workshop to gather insights, which were quickly validated by the BUFFL panel. This step-by-step approach helped Springbok and Ethias truly understand how young people think and communicate.
Key areas like cyber, living together, mobility, and travel were identified as central to young people's lives, providing entry points for Ethias. Engaging directly with young people allowed Ethias to understand not just what matters to them, but how they communicate about these challenges. This input was crucial in shaping the vibrant new stories behind Ethias’s youth-focused offerings.
“At Ethias we want to communicate inclusively. Gaining immediate insight into whether our message is getting through, is extremely important. BUFFL enables us to validate our ideas in real-time making sure that whatever we put out there, works.” - Vincent Pecasse (Head of Marketing)
With the newly developed campaigns Springbok and Ethias not only managed to win over youngsters. Going the extra mile /Taking that little bit of extra time to hear out youngsters directly, also helped them secure a Bronze Effie and a Bronze IAB MIXX award for Best Media Engagement Campaign!
How we added value
The different interventions and research iterations generated valuable learnings for Ethias ranging from data, over insights to decisions.
Data: Identification of very low engagement with the insurance category. Insurance is merely an obligation or sidenote to activities they undertake or care about such as mobility, living together and traveling.
Insights: Youngsters share information about complex topics using stories they themselves or people close to them have experienced. Situational thinking helps youngsters see the value and relevance of insurance and makes the topic relatable. Specific youngster language is used to connect and convey information. Youngsters are not so much looking for specific insurance products but rather a trustworthy, easy-to-reach partner who speaks their language.
Decisions: Ethias decides to enter this new market leveraging products in a situational context spiked with authentic youngster language. These key ingredients boosted the feeling of familiarity with youngsters and had a clear effect on acquisition of this new target group.
