Challenging the creative status quo in medicare

I’d confidently claim that one of my main superpowers as a copywriter, after more than 13 years in the industry, is making even the most mundane, dull-as-dishwater topic sound more alluring. Even senior health insurance.

But the proof’s in the pudding, right?

Well, get your spoon ready because this project spotlight puts a generous helping of substance behind my bold claim.

During my time as Copy Lead at growth marketing agency, Ladder.io, we were approached by a US medicare advisory company that wanted to do things differently. Their market was (and still is) saturated with uninspiring messages, sterile brand voices and samey marketing assets.

Yawn. These guys wanted to stand out and it was our job to help them.

So, as a creative team, we ideated and iterated a number of different creative concepts for a series of Facebook carousel ads, all conveying the same key message: minimising the cost and complexity of finding medicare cover.

Creative Facebook carousel ad concepts

My favourite and the one we rolled with for further conceptual development was a route we dubbed ‘Good Old/New Days’.

This creative avenue allowed us to speak directly to the key target audience (people over the age of 65) but resonate with them in a more fresh and engaging way than all the other cookie-cutter competitor stuff out there.

We used activities more typically associated with young people, like riding a motorcycle and doing yoga, to visualise our concept ad that ‘the other side of 65’ (one of the brand’s leading taglines) can be fun and exhilarating when medicare doesn’t feel like a burden.

I reflected this in our copy lines, with empowering and uplifting phrases like:

• The good old days are now

• Make this your best chapter yet (a play on the brand’s name)

The performance-related goal for these ads was to drive more people to use the free medicare calculator available on the website. So, around the conceptual copy we used to engage and stand out, I made to sure to keep the CTAs clear and direct.

A supplementary direct mailer

As part of the wider creative project for this client, we were also briefed to produce a direct mailer positioned as a ‘Letter from the CEO’. The aim was to reflect the family values of the family-run business and show human support for those transitioning into the new chapter of life.

We applied the Good Old/New Days creative concept and developed the copy direction briefed, which was around the message 'let this be your best chapter’ yet.

We translated our digital assets into a distinctive print mail piece that we believed would catch somebody’s eye in their mailbox.

Concepts that didn’t make the cut

One of the other creative avenues we explored for a while, which I also really loved, was the ‘Gameshow’ route.

The idea here was to resonate with the target audience’s pain points by showing that we understood that finding the right medicare cover at the right cost often feels like a confusing puzzle that’s impossible to solve.

We used smart synergy between copy and design to execute this concept within the same messaging objective and performance goal.

Through extensive research of industry terminology, we discovered that medicare comes in four different plans: A, B, C and D. The gameshow-themed ads felt like the perfect place to indulge in this particular wordplay.

If you want the customer to have fun reading your words, you’ve got to have fun writing them after all.

That’s my motto anyway!

Looking for a freelance copywriter who can cut through the noise and make your brand stand out in a crowded industry?