Deconstructing One House

Suncorp’s One House was a ground-breaking initiative in 2021 that proposed a new way to build safer homes in Australia. It won countless awards, achieved 20 million+ impressions, and sparked a national conversation around how we think about our homes.

Getting a project like this to market was never going to be easy, and its success offers inspiration to anyone wanting to get a big idea off the ground, said Lisa Leach, Head of Strategy for Suncorp at OMD, and Caroline Hugall, Chief Strategy Officer at Spark Foundry, during their MFA EX 2023 session.

Here are the key takeaways:

The bigger the idea, the better

The ideas that make you think ‘How the f**k?!” will inspire your best work, said the speakers. And they won’t always come in a brief. Know your client’s business inside out, and you’ll be able to answer a brief they didn’t know they needed.

With a big idea, the speakers stressed the importance of being part of the conversation right from the start. With One House, media were briefed at the same time as creative, and all ideas were presented to the client together.

Make it culturally relevant

When it comes to big ideas, the magic is found in the data, said the speakers. One House was conceived after Australia’s worst bushfires and during the pandemic. People were anxious and their behaviours towards a low-interest category like insurance were changing.

Rather than taking the normal route and presenting a campaign around risk stats, One House offered a solution – a proactive move that homeowners, builders and government could get behind at a time when it really mattered.

Consider how you’ll tell the story

The One House story couldn’t be told through short-form content and the usual 15- or 30-second slots. So, the agency found a new way to tell it – the One House documentary, which captured the public’s imagination and conveyed the full narrative.

For more insights from Lisa Leach and Caroline Hugall’s talk at MFA EX, watch this video.