Insurer AXA Plucks Rivals Branded Content Copybook

AXA Insurance Singapore has collaborated with online video platform Viddsee to launch a risky short film.

The Family Portrait is a five-minute short, focusing on the financial plight of a family whose members are desperate to save the matriarch who is possibly going through a cancer relapse, but can’t afford to pay for her costly treatment.

 “We sought to convey AXA’s message through an emotionally engaging film, which has the ability to engage and spark discussion across different age groups in ways that statistics and numbers can’t,” said Derek Tan, the Chief Commercial Officer of Viddsee. The film is risky in creative terms, in that it paints a negative picture. That said, to give the brand & Viddsee credit, it does break other insurance tropes which usually paint rosy happily-ever-after family scenes.

The film will run during Q120 on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Viddsee. It has garnered over 202k views since it was released on YouTube six days ago.  

“With rising life expectancy and the average working Singaporean lacking about 3.1 times his annual salary in critical illness insurance protection, Singaporeans across generations need to realise the urgency in planning for such unforeseen events today, rather than later,” said Jeremy Ong, Chief Customer and Operations Officer, AXA Insurance Singapore.

Axa – headquartered in France – is a mammoth global insurer, and business is healthy with its latest Q3 reports showing a 5% growth in revenues.

According to ASN data, the insurer has invested slightly over US$6m for both sport and non-sport platforms in the Asian sponsorship landscape since Q217.  Spends in non-sport platforms contributed 16.6% (US$1m+) to the investment and have been focused on two markets; Singapore (55.9%) and Hong Kong (44.1%). Its recent dive into branded content with The Family Portrait is a long-overdue move and follows a strategy often deployed by AXA’s rivals in the region such as Great Eastern, AIA and Thai Life Insurance.