Turning a Decade of Performance into a Brand Promise.
Winner of “Best Performing Pension” at the annual brokers awards — ten years out of eleven.
Forage out the truth
Category Sameness vs. Proven Performance. The pensions category talks in sector-wide terms. Providers explain why a pension matters – start early, compound interest, plan for later life – in language so interchangeable that the advertising works for everyone and belongs to no one. In a market that generic, attribution defaults to the biggest name in the room.
What we uncovered: Zurich had something no competitor could claim. Their investment team had won “Best Performing Pension” at the annual brokers awards every year for the previous ten, every year but one, the year of the pandemic. Not a positioning statement. A verifiable, decade-long record.
Why it mattered: Pensions are a high-stakes, low-engagement purchase. Two-thirds of Irish workers hold supplementary pension cover, and most arrive at a provider by default rather than by choice. When people do engage, the only question that survives is a simple one: whose fund actually performs? That was the truth worth owning.
Strategy that drives differentiation
From award record to brand truth. We took a credential that lived in trade press and broker conversations and turned it into the brand’s central consumer promise. The strategic move was to stop advocating for the category and start arguing for the client, shifting the conversation from why a pension to whose pension.
To separate Zurich from the sameness around it, we built the campaign on a single proposition: Performance Counts. Two words that carry the proof, the product benefit, and the reason to choose and that no competitor in the category could have credibly said.
Creativity that cuts through
We didn’t claim performance. We made it recognisable. We executed a fully integrated campaign that connected the abstract idea of fund performance to something people already understand: the everyday effort, repetition, and small margins that separate good from best. Consistent, confident, and unmistakably Zurich.
- Video production & films: A hero film for TV and VOD, supported by a suite of 10-second cutdowns built for digital and social attention spans.
- Digital & social media marketing: Precision-targeted creative connecting long-term performance to the moments people actually think about retirement.
- Radio & OOH: Broad-reach frequency behind a single, repeatable proposition.
- Performance marketing: Targeted digital designed to capture leads and enquiries, not just impressions.
- Data-led scheduling: Media weight aligned to high-conversion windows – pension and tax deadline periods – so the message landed when intent was highest.
As a full-service creative agency, we reaffirmed Zurich’s global brand codes for consistency while building local assets designed to cut through to the Irish consumer.
Results that deliver lasting value
Commercial Growth Through Consistency. The campaign proved that a single, provable truth executed consistently outperforms category-generic messaging – and it moved the metrics that matter commercially, not just creatively.
- +33% Uplift in brand consideration: A key predictor of future policy sales.
- +21% Increase in leads and enquiries: Direct commercial response, concentrated in peak-intent windows.
- Category differentiation: Performance is now Zurich’s reason to be chosen, not a claim shared with the category.
The partnership
Zurich’s performance record is no longer a trade credential – it’s a consumer-facing competitive advantage. At Bloom, we help brands like Zurich find the one truth their competitors can’t borrow, and build it into work that gets correctly attributed.
