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Challenge

Simply Business, a digital broker that serves small businesses and landlords – and long time client of MI Media – shared its ambition to shift the dial on key brand and revenue metrics in 2024 while being mindful of how competitive the insurance category is. From talking meerkats to opera singers, insurance brands are some of the UK’s biggest marketing spenders and have a history of creating noise. The brief culminated in launching new creative – ‘Simply Biz-ness’, a memorable play on Tina Turner’s 1980s hit ‘The Best’ – which captures the feeling of knowing your business is protected. The new creative represented an exciting new milestone for Simply Business, as the company looked to help even more small businesses across the UK find the insurance that’s right for them. 

Whereas previous campaigns had focused on Simply Business’ sole trader customers, the TV-driven growth of its direct business had highlighted a high value audience in the micro-SME space. The new ad needed to appeal to this audience and continue to bring energy to a category which can sometimes feel intimidating to small business owners. 

Marketing Insight

In a low interest category like insurance, it’s hard to get customers to look beyond the cheapest price when making a purchase decision. By taking a brand-led approach, we knew we could continue to grow Simply Business’ direct business, meaning higher lifetime values and lower customer acquisition costs. Becoming a household name also increases trust in a brand, something that’s crucial for the success of an insurance company. 

Since going live with its first TV ad in 2022, we had worked with Simply Business to reach new levels of direct bookings and brand awareness. TV was a channel that the client trusted to do the job of reaching millions of its target audience, creating engagement and ultimately raising brand awareness. 

Media Innovation

To align with the creative theme of people being their best or trying their best, we looked for contextual headline TV moments such as live sport and skilled reality, where there was high attention viewing and a live audience. 

We front-weighted budgets in the first two weeks and launched with a 40s creative in the first week to make sure the brand message had a chance to really resonate. Focusing on mainstream channels such as ITV Breakfast, Channel 4 and Sky, we secured high impact spots against key programming, with the campaign kicking off with a high-profile ad break on Sky Sports during the Premier League’s opening 2024/25 game.  

It continued to run across national TV and VOD with appointment to view, select programming including coverage of the Paralympic Games. We refined budgets, concentrating them into bigger channels and losing the long-tail stations. On the smaller channels we introduced a 10s ad to increase frequency and land the earworm more efficiently. 

We also conducted BVOD and Sky Shortform tests to extend the campaign’s reach to lighter linear TV viewers and grow 1+ reach. We decided to put 10% of budgets behind VOD with appointment to view, select programming that would give Simply Business incremental access to audiences under 45. 

Media Innovation

Accelerating Growth

Our approach supported Simply Business on its continued growth trajectory, demonstrating the value of AV investment on short-term commercial metrics (with direct revenues growing 24% YoY) as well as driving long-term brand equity – with brand awareness boosted +56% since AV began and brand consideration scores doubling.  

The success of the campaign has bred confidence within the Simply Business team and its stakeholders to push on towards yet more growth – which we’re delighted to keep supporting them on!