Special Brings the Dead Back to Life for One ‘Last Performance’ in Campaign for Partners Life

New Zealand life insurance provider, Partners Life, has partnered with Special New Zealand to deliver a disruptive advertising campaign, The Last Performance, challenging Kiwis to rethink preconceptions around life insurance.

Over the past six weeks, Partners Life ads have aired at the end of each episode of Kiwi whodunnit drama, The Brokenwood Mysteries, using the characters and plotlines to integrate the storyline into the ads.

Following episode one, for example, before the credits rolled, the 30-second spot aired featuring Kiwi actress Meryl Main, who played Janis, the first murder victim of the series.

As Janis’s corpse comes back to life, she looks down at the camera to lament the unexpected nature of death, saying, “Well this is unexpected...what are my boys going to do without their mummy now, sorry lads there’s no life insurance policy”.

The ad spot ends by encouraging viewers to ‘plan ahead and get life right’ with Partners Life. Throughout the series, similar tongue-in-cheek ads from Partner’s Life aired, with a bespoke film created to play at the end of each episode in the six-part series.

The ad series has been brought to life by Special New Zealand and aims to bring about a new awareness and consideration for the importance of life insurance and jolt New Zealanders out of apathy and into action.

Naomi Ballantyne, managing director at Partners Life says the creative and humorous approach to an often overlooked and sometimes morbid topic like life insurance is just what is needed to grab Kiwis’ attention: “New Zealand is, unfortunately, one of the most under-insured countries in the world. We want to change that and help Kiwis to understand just how important life insurance is. We know there’s a lot of apathy when it comes to insurance, so were eager to ensure this campaign was one that stuck with audiences. The Last Performance is a disruptive and convention challenging campaign, using humour and integration to disrupt standard advertising in the insurance industry and encourage viewers to engage with the content."

Lisa Fedyszyn, ECD at Special New Zealand says the campaign was an exciting one to work on: “Partners Life is always challenging industry norms and taking an innovative approach to everything they do – And their approach to advertising is no different. This is an idea that died and came back to life, about characters who die and come back to life, but it was important to find the right series to partner with. The team at South Pacific Pictures were so collaborative and inviting, and we appreciate the opportunity to jump on the back of this extremely popular show, to help New Zealanders see the importance of living with foresight rather than hindsight."