The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2025
Nedbank lets pickpockets sell travel insurance — 'Hard-Working Professionals' Loeries Gold
Instead of lecturing tourists, Nedbank's films let muggers brag about their craft — and the ad pickpockets its own audience.
Nedbank
What it had to solve
Travel insurance is seen as a grudge purchase on top of an already pricey trip, so most South Africans fly without it. Nedbank wanted to sell the free cover bundled with its Platinum Credit Card — up to R3 million when flights are booked with the card — without lecturing.
How it works
Travel insurance is one of the most ignored financial products in South Africa: only one in five travellers takes it out, seeing it as a grudge purchase on top of an expensive trip. Nedbank wanted to change that for its Platinum Credit Card, which bundles up to R3 million of free travel insurance when flights are booked with the card.
Joe Public's answer was to let the criminals talk. Three documentary-style films — shot with a deliberately small crew on the pickpocket hotspots of Paris, Barcelona and Koh Samui — introduce François, Anna and Yuto as a chef, a waitress and a photographer, each sympathetically describing the demands of their career.
Mid-film, the tone turns: they are not workers, they are professional pickpockets, and by the reveal they have metaphorically robbed the audience too. The films mirror the vulnerability the campaign warns about — if an ad can 'mug' a viewer in thirty seconds, a distracted tourist can lose their valuables in a moment.
The integrated campaign carried the same insight into social, print and radio, and at the 2025 Loeries it earned Nedbank seven awards, including a Campaign Gold for the online films and a Gold for Craft Writing.
Why it lands
- Dramatising the risk from the criminal's own point of view makes the danger visceral, where a lecture would have been ignored.
- The twist does the selling: the ad 'mugs' the viewer, so the warning is felt rather than heard.
- Documentary style and real hotspot locations gave the films authenticity, making the misdirection land.
- Choosing destinations South Africans trust — Paris, Barcelona, Thailand — made the threat feel personally relevant.
What it did
Nedbank took 7 Loeries at the 2025 awards — including a Campaign Gold for the online films and a Gold for Craft Writing — plus Creative Circle and I Did That craft honours, making an ignored category one of the region's most awarded campaigns.
What you can take
An ignored product category can be sold by dramatising the risk from the offender's point of view — let the ad itself commit the crime it warns against.
Since then
Hard-Working Professionals was among the most awarded SA campaigns of 2025: Nedbank collected seven Loeries — a Campaign Gold for the online films, a Gold for Craft Writing, a Silver for Integrated Campaign and a Bronze for radio — plus a Creative Circle First and I Did That craft mentions. Trade coverage centred on the directors' research into reformed criminals and the 'corporate ladder' of pickpocketing, and the work proved a grudge-purchase category can become gripping storytelling. No sales figures were published; the legacy was creative, resetting how the category is talked about.
Sources
- Nedbank 'mugs' audience with new travel insurance campaign
- Joe Public and 7Films Metaphorically Pickpocketed Nedbank's Audience
- Nedbank 'Hard-Working Professionals'
- #Loeries2025 Night 2 | All the winners
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