A tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign about ‘beard insurance’ has landed Bristol-based insurer SunLife a top industry award.
The April Fool’s spoof beat off competition from NatWest and M&G Investments to win Best Use of Social Media at the Money Marketing Awards. 
The campaign – with the tagline ‘reassurance of knowing that if you were to lose your beard, you wouldn’t lose face’ – included a video and quote service via Twitter, and was praised by the judges for the way it connected with its audience.
It offered ‘cover’ from £3 a month – with the cost depending on the length of the beard. Beards were covered for malicious or accidental damage – including getting burned by a barbecue. Beards over 50cm in length could not be insured.
Money Marketing editor Natalie Holt said: “Judges saw a diverse range of campaigns, but decided Beard Insurance should win the Best Use of Social Media category based on its fun, tongue-in-cheek concept.
“It was felt that SunLife used humour effectively to pitch to a specific demographic which would have typically been unlikely to engage in buying insurance products.”
The campaign was created entirely in house by the SunLife team in Bristol. NatWest and M&G Investments both had bigger budgets and used outside agencies.
SunLife managing director Dean Lamble collected the trophy from comedian Katherine Ryan at held at awards ceremony in Old Billingsgate, London.
He said: “Social has been an important part of the SunLife marketing strategy since the rebrand in 2014, so we are really pleased that our hard work in this area is paying off, both in terms of engagement with our audience and recognition by the industry. A huge well done to everyone involved.”
The award is the second accolade for the Beard Insurance campaign – it also won the Content Marketing category at the Financial Services Forum awards in December, where judges said it “set a high standard for others to follow”.
