What it had to solve
Follow up the first successful Allianz Direct campaign with Bolt earlier in 2020, this time selling home insurance across Europe with the message 'Insure your home in now time'.
The idea
Put the world's fastest sprinter at a slow yoga retreat: even Usain Bolt needs to take it easy — and while reflecting, he checks that his valuables are insured.
How it works
With Covid-19 blocking travel to Jamaica, the team shot the film in the Netherlands with a stand-in, edited it, then had Bolt redo the scenes on a green screen — giving him quick, efficient directions because they knew exactly what they needed.
What it did
It became Allianz Direct's first European campaign focused on home insurance. The material reports no conversion figures; senior marketeer Natasja Staal said the result fits the proposition of getting insurance quickly and easily online despite the corona virus challenges.
Background
In August 2020 Allianz Direct, the European direct insurer, launched its second campaign with Usain Bolt — and its first with a clear focus on home insurance, a line it had added to its portfolio in 2018. The message: 'Insure your home in now time with Allianz Direct.'
The joke is the casting: the fastest man alive goes to a yoga retreat, taking time to reflect — and while he is at it, he checks whether the valuables in his house are insured and gets covered directly with Allianz Direct. Creative director Jorn Kruijsen of Amsterdam agency ALFRED International: 'Even the fastest man in the world needs to take it easy at some point.'
The production nearly didn't survive Covid-19. The team had travelled from the Netherlands to Jamaica for the first campaign, but that was impossible this time. Instead ALFRED and Allianz Direct shot the commercial in the Netherlands with a stand-in, made an edit, then had Bolt redo the scenes on a green screen in Jamaica — workable, Kruijsen explained, because knowing exactly what they needed from the stand-in let them give Bolt quick and efficient directions.
Why it lands
The campaign solves a brand-fit problem with humour: Bolt's speed sells 'now time' insurance, while the yoga retreat sells the ease of getting covered.
The green-screen workaround kept a global celebrity production alive during lockdown at stand-in rehearsal cost, without compromising the edit-first plan.
It extends a proven celebrity platform onto a new product line — home — for a direct insurer building a European brand.
What you can take
Casting against type does the persuasion: the fastest man on earth slowed to a yoga retreat makes 'take it easy' — and by extension easy insurance — impossible to ignore, even from a green screen.
Since then
The material records the August 2020 European launch. No later campaign or performance data appears in the source.
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