Direct Line: Fleetlights [image]

Credits & Description:

Title: Fleetlights
Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi
Brand: Direct Line
Country: United Kingdom
Entrant Company: Saatchi & Saatchi, London
Advertising Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi, London
Media Agency: Mediacom , London
Pr Agency: Unity, London
Production Company: The Sound Company, London / Electric Theatre Collective, London / Inside Job, London
Executive Creative Director: Andy Jex (Saatchi & Saatchi)
Executive Creative Director: Rob Potts (Saatchi & Saatchi)
Creative: Mark Campion (Saatchi & Saatchi)
Digital Executive Creative Director: Ricardo Figueira (Saatchi & Saatchi)
Director: Ross Cairns (Inside Job)
Head Of Planning: Sam Wise (Saatchi & Saatchi)
Business Leader: Alice Flanagan (Saatchi & Saatchi)
Account Director: Paul Mchugh (Saatchi & Saatchi)
Editor: Alex Pickering (Inside Job)
Head Of Content: Alex Hedges (Inside Job)
Executive Producer: Kelly Broad (Inside Job)
Executive Producer: Matthew Jones (Inside Job)
Producer: Simone Maggi (Inside Job)
Producer: Julia Frost (Inside Job)
Producer: Hollie Forsyth (Inside Job)
Producer: Elliot Dollie (Inside Job)
Producer: Stephen Riera (Inside Job)
Drone Engineer: Peter King (Westmids.com)
Drone Engineer: Richard Lewis (Skytec)
Drone Engineer: Gary Howell (Morgan Walsh Consultancy Ltd)
Drone Software Development: Michael Oborne (Ardupilot)
App Development: Dan Griffiths (Crew Studio)
App Development: Simon Cam (Crew Studio)
Head Of Design: Bruno Di Lucca (Saatchi & Saatchi)
Designer: Daniel Reeve (Saatchi & Saatchi)
Developer: Rodrigo Feijao (Saatchi & Saatchi)
Designer: Barbara Di Gaiarim (Saatchi & Saatchi)
Media Planner: Phillip Iorio (Mediacom)
Media Planner: Anna Berry (Mediacom)
Execution:
Direct Line worked with some of the leading engineers in drone communities across the UK and Australia to create Fleetlights, which is comprised of three main design elements: i) An interconnected swarm of drones.The beta Fleet is comprised of 15 standard UAVs, with a single high efficiency lighting unit, and 5 advanced UAVs each with 3 lights. We created the fleet using aircraft-grade materials and modified its power, so that it would be able to travel at 40mph, to guide a car.ii) A ‘Fleet Control’ Dispatch CentreCoordinates requests between the Fleet and its users. Built using the ‘Mission Planner’ open source autopilot system, we worked with its creator, Michael Obourne, to R&D a revolutionary ‘ground to swarm’ formation program.iii) A bespoke smartphone applicationAn application to summon, guide and dismiss Fleetlights via 4G - designed with a ‘one-touch’ request function and integrated with our flight system.
Strategy:
We wanted to be famous for High Performance; this meant speaking to the widest audience possible, with work that was debated and shared. The best place to do this was social media - but that was a dangerous place to make promises.“Direct Line makes the world more High Performance” is a huge promise - too good to be true. In a post-truth, alternative facts, fake news environment, actions speak louder than words.Strategy realised that to make an impact with an audience that didn’t care about insurance, we would have to do something non-trivial, and something real. We would look at a serious situation - something where lives were at stake - and build a credible answer to it. This would be no faked concept film. It had to be a real technical trial, an event that would allow people to see exactly what we were doing and how.
Outcome:
We’d planned for 3.2 million completed views, but the strength of the media and creative gave us 5.6. Those who saw it experienced the right brand effects - we saw uplifts of Direct Line as a modern and innovative brand. The idea had the coverage effect we’d hoped for - Fleetlights sparked the imaginations of tech and lifestyle influencers, leading to 1.2bn blog impressions, coverage in national newspapers including The Times and Evening Standard, and an unpaid segment on a national talk show. And because we did Fleetlights properly, the tech is being built upon by drone enthusiasts, filmmakers and even emergency services.Best of all, Fleetlights is now Direct Line’s guiding light: their product teams are giving us more inspiring insurance ideas than ever before, every part of the business is talking about how it can become more High Performance - and the next innovation project is underway…
Campaign Description:
This was about proof, not promises, so we decided to launch a series of initiatives that would each use High Performance thinking to redefine a problem.For the first, Fleetlights, we took on one of the most fundamental problems out there – darkness. Darkness causes fear, criminality, and thousands of road deaths in the UK every year.Fleetlights is the solution. Rather than lighting every inch of every road, the Fleetlights service dispatches a swarm of drones to lead the user where they want to go, lighting the way ahead. All controlled by the user’s smartphone.The service is designed with mainland travel in mind, but we have released the tech over the GitHub code community, so it can be adapted to other situations where light is vital, making Direct Line’s High Performance promise relevant to many more industries than traditional insurance.
Synopsis:
Price Comparison Websites make it look like all insurance is the same, and the most important thing is getting a cheap policy. That attitude has set the stage for anyone to break into insurance. The winner of Best New Insurer in 2016 was John Lewis - a department store.Direct Line launched in 1985 to transform what insurance could be, by cutting out the broker. As the whole category faced being turned into just another cheap commodity, it was up to us to push back this force.Since 2015, we’ve done it with our products, running ads that show how our High Performance attitude creates insurance beyond comparison. But people only care about insurance when it’s time to renew. To reach everyone, we needed to make them rethink what High Performance insurance could be – from putting problems right, to preventing problems from happening.