Nib targets growth through membership benefits

A new campaign from nib aims to position the health insurer as a health and wellbeing partner as it seeks to grow it customer base.

NIB's Potentially Amazing campaign was created by Dentsu Creative.

Health insurance brand nib has launched a major marketing campaign in a bid to reposition the business as a health and wellbeing brand.

The business wants customers to look beyond insurance to see nib as a “total health partner” and take advantage of its benefits which includes telehealth consultations and an AI symptom checker.

The strategy aims to engage nib’s target audience, which skews towards younger consumers in the 25-40-year-old age bracket who don’t see themselves needing to go to hospital but do require more everyday health services.

Nib head of marketing & digital Chris Donald told The Growth Agenda the strategy aims to highlight its products to existing customers and entice future customers by showcasing the benefits of an nib membership.

“This campaign is about helping to get the idea that nib equals more than health insurance to the broader public,” he said. “We believe this campaign is a key way to highlight that to our existing customers, and at the same time, we hope that this campaign is also a way of inviting new customers into the brand.”

With only half of all Australians owning health insurance policies, Mr Donald said nib hoped to engage with new audiences by positioning as a health partner, rather than an insurance provider.

“We believe there’s relatively few [businesses] in the country, when it comes to health and wellbeing, and how that can have a fairly broad spectrum approach. That’s where we see ourselves playing a role, and perhaps being more attractive, and carving out a particular role in people’s user base of brands that they go to,” said Mr Donald.

The campaign, which was created by Dentsu Creative, employs a quirky humour to cut through the crowded marketplace and provide an edge over competitors such as Bupa, HCF and Medibank.

“We wanted to do it in a way that was true to nib, which was down-to-earth, humorous as well as engaging and differentiated, so that we were distinct and did step out from the crowd in the right way.”

Dentsu Creative strategy partner Graham Alvarez-Jarratt added, “Personality was incredibly important, this is one of those categories that can very easily stray into being quite earnest, and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. But, it was incredibly important to us to be down-to-earth and have a real sense of fun and personality around this very serious message, and that’s hopefully what we’ve delivered.”

The campaign, which is running across TV, cinema, radio, digital, out of home and social media channels, comes weeks after NIB Holdings revealed the number of people who have taken out private health insurance through the business had grown for the 15th consecutive quarter, despite the cost of living pressures.

The marketing campaign and strategy supports the business’ overall Payer to Partner vision which aims to make nib “as much a health management company as we are a private health insurer,” according to nib chief executive and managing director Mark Fitzgibbon.