How VCCP Used 3D Projection Mapping to Create a Transforming House

Specialist insurer Hiscox is about to unveil its latest TV advert, reinforcing its home insurance credentials with the strapline ‘as your home becomes more important, so does your insurer’.

The advert uses a 3D projection mapping technique, in an advertising first conceived by Hiscox and VCCP. Hiscox's comprehensive home insurance is built around an understanding of the changing role of our home as we progress through life. The ad highlights this by following a man as he reflects on how his priorities – and his home – have evolved, using the striking 3D projection mapping technique to bring his thoughts to life on the outside of his house.

As the advert opens, we see a man walking towards his home in a quiet suburban road. As he enters the house, he explains that, despite moving here at the age of 35, this is the house he truly grew up in. 

The house façade collapses and folds to reveal, room by room, the different influences on our protagonist’s life – his wife, son, daughter and his passions and hobbies. As the different rooms change and evolve we observe other moments in his life such as the couple watching TV on a sofa, and then a room full of the couple’s friends at a dinner party. 

To achieve the effect, VCCP and motion studio Found worked together to create animated content that conveys the hero’s narrative. Having chosen the house, the projection was filmed using a motion controlled camera, perfectly syncing the projected content with the live action camera on the shoot day as it tracked around the house. This movement is not normally possible with traditional projection mapping which is designed for a live audience watching from one fixed viewing angle. 

Kieran Knight and Veryan Prigg, creative team at VCCP, commented: “This commercial uses 3D projection mapping in a unique way, projecting onto an average family home, rather than a towering iconic building in Europe. A simple house now actually becomes the hero, changing, twisting and turning to tell a meaningful story.”

Mike Sharpe, Director at Found, added: “We were absolutely adamant from the beginning of the project that we wouldn’t “fake” anything in post-production trickery. There is a valuable integrity to doing something for real that people respond well to – rewarding challenge, and a technical first, for us.”

Will Abbott, Marketing Director at Hiscox UK, explained: “Hiscox has always been known for its distinctive and bold advertising and this is no different. We’ve used an innovative and sophisticated visual technique to dramatise a simple consumer insight, in a way that sets Hiscox apart from the rest of the category.”

The 40-second advert will launch on 14 October on TV, as well as a 30 second cut-down. It will launch in cinema on 24 October. Press, OOH and digital will run concurrently, as part of the same campaign. Vizeum handled the media buying.