NZ Home Loans sent 'Fun' himself to a pub karaoke night to mourn his friends' mortgages

New Zealand Home Loans wanted to cut through a financial category full of 'join us, life is amazing!' messaging and reach an audience squeezed by mortgages, young families and ageing parents, while fixing a brand few people could attribute.

Personify 'Fun' as a calm, self-assured karaoke regular who laments that mortgages stole his friends — saving right is how you hang out with him again.

Set at a pub karaoke night, the film stars a charismatic, relaxed 'Fun' — a vaguely familiar figure, like the cool older guy from high school — who tells the room "ever since you lot got mortgages I swear it's like you don't even recognise me" before inviting them to get on top of their mortgages and hang out with him again. Director Dave Wood of Good Oil shaped the character's look, wardrobe and delivery; the campaign also introduces a deliberate sonic brand, a distinctive melodic line that closes every execution, alongside fixed brand colours.

No results are reported yet. The campaign's stated job is attribution and recognition: distinctive brand assets — character, colour and sonic signature — designed to make every execution traceable back to NZHL, injecting hope where category advertising sells forced optimism.

New Zealand Home Loans (NZHL) launched a campaign that personifies 'Fun' as a character, created by Kiwi indie agency Bad Magic with director Dave Wood of Good Oil. Bad Magic ECD Thomas Darlow told LBB the team originally imagined a middle-aged person who had been having fun since high school — until Wood warned them that was almost impossible to play. What they landed on is a calm, self-assured cavalier, "vaguely familiar", like the cool old guy from high school you haven't seen in years.

The film is set at a pub karaoke night, where the charismatic 'Fun' laments: "ever since you lot got mortgages I swear it's like you don't even recognise me" — before asking the audience to get in touch with NZHL to get on top of their mortgages and "hang out with me again". Wood says the character works as a guide through a world of people the squeeze has affected: not manic or screaming, but interesting enough to hook viewers and let them be led.

The strategic context: NZHL head of marketing Janelle Ericksen says the brand's marketing had been "growing quite stale", and the audience is in the crunchiest stage of life — careers, young families, mortgages, ageing parents — while the category defaults to "join us, life is amazing!" messaging. NZHL began working with Bad Magic a year before. Darlow says the agency has been deliberately building distinctive brand assets: a sonic brand with a melodic line that ends every execution, fixed brand colours and now the character, so attention finally attributes back to the company.

Production was by Good Oil: director Dave Wood, producer Andrew McLean, managing director George Mackenzie, cinematographer Crighton Bone and production designer Guy Treadgold, with casting by Catch Casting and post through The Machine Room MAC. The Bad Magic team included creative director Tom Darlow, strategy director Julie Darlow, art director Mike Davidson and producer Paul Kennedy.

The idea attacks the category's real problem — indistinguishable optimism — by dramatising what customers have actually lost: fun.

It builds distinctive brand assets (character, sonic line, colour) to fix attribution, which matters for a brand whose name is a generic acronym.

The character is written against type: calm and self-assured rather than manic, so the humour reads as nostalgia rather than a gag.

Abstract category benefits need a body: personify what the customer is missing, cast him as a specific nostalgic personality, and a mortgage product becomes someone people miss.

The campaign is newly launched as of October 2026; no performance results are reported in the source.