So after the antics of the previous night and the bitesize amount of sleep, I was up, eager and ready to go! About 8 of us went down to the MWO agency in Covent Gardens and were met and greeted at 10am from a delightful team of people from the agency. The MD had a word with us regarding what they do as well as an accountant and creative briefing us on Swiftcover, an online car insurance company. They told us of the history behind the campaign to how it is today. Originally it was just a piece of software with no name and no branding. It was really inspiring hearing the progress and development to something that is so strong today. Here's the brief they wanted us to explore;
The concise brief showed us what they're looking for while one of the creatives pointing out they want to keep it simple and not too complex to explain when it comes to presenting it back at half past 5. It gave me Ryan and Sean 6 hours to complete this interesting task.
We then left and went into a local pub down the road to get some ideas down. We thought of what features the product has in which could be looked into further when creating our campaign.
After this initial brainstorm, we continued into developing some more ideas into drawings:
We started thinking of the importance time is and we wanted to show what other things you could be doing in 60 seconds to help emphasize the speed of Swift Cover. So we thought of the idea of having your quote ready before the kettle is boiled for example..
We then thought about having a new celebrity face to fit into the campaign idea. We thought of Terry Tibbs off Fonejacker who has a strong link with cars with his comedic humour. With his classic cars salesman style, we wasn't sure if this was giving across the wrong message. This idea was scrapped.
We then thought of the idea of having someone who is relaxed and happy around busy environments as he knows he's swift covered. Examples of this includes underground escalators in London and rush hour traffic on a motorway. We thought of the simple strapline of assurance - No Worries. Swift Covered. We wanted the portray the idea of he can take his life one step at a time without rushing around.
We extended this further into different perspectives within dangerous environments but shows they don't have a care in the world.
The last idea above shows the concept of being at a really important event or situation where people can’t leave such a pregnancy or a football match. But knowing that they need to renew their car insurance means they have to go early due to the sheer amount of time it takes to do. But the people who are swift covered stay at the event as they can deal with their car insurance in 60 seconds. The events we chose are an important football match or the birth of a child.
We got some positive professional feedback and liked the relaxing idea and these could be explore in a number of different ways. It was a fascinating day hearing their stories and advice. They mentioned something which will always stick to my mind; Good advertising happens when you come up with the good simple idea regardless of how good the execution is. I feel this is very true as for example they own the current Wickes account and campaign for "it's got our name on it" with such a simple slogan, it ties back to a lot of history of builders in the industry marking their name on it like a piece of artwork or a signature. This idea can be executed on a range of different mediums while still giving that main important message of quality.
I really enjoyed going to MWO, a fairly small advertising agency who are all very welcome and nice who seem to care about making long lasting memorable campaigns. It was also a great eye opening experience visiting the actual agency and feeling their atmosphere of work. This is a similar environment I would like to work in the future.