Building brand memory for Ethias

Executive summary

When Ethias, a leading Belgian insurer, launched its new brand identity, it needed more than just a standard launch campaign. It needed a way to truly reconnect with everyone. Our mission was to take the new identity and launch it with an effective brand awareness campaign across every corner of Belgium. We developed a two-wave performance strategy to simultaneously engage B2C, B2B, B2G and corporate audiences. By focusing on maximum-quality visibility and smart repetition, the campaign successfully reintroduced Ethias, improving brand perception and spontaneous awareness.

Results

The results for Flanders:

• Reach in Flanders (60% of the budget): Reached 74.56% of the target audience with an average of 7.95 ad impressions per person.
• Reach in Wallonia (40% of the budget): Reached 57.89% of the target audience with an average of 7.13 ad impressions per person.
• Improved brand perception: An independent brand lift study found that nearly half of all Belgians reported having a better image of Ethias after the campaign.
• Increased brand awareness: The study also confirmed a clear increase in both spontaneous and total brand awareness after wave 2. This was also reflected in a rise in spontaneous searches and website visits, creating more opportunities for conversion.
• The campaign successfully helped people understand the meaning of the new "H" logo (representing connection) and showed no signs of ad fatigue.

Our approach

The big idea

Ethias needed to reintroduce its rebranding across Belgium. The main goal was simple: brand awareness. The challenge was to make sure the new logo and its message of human connection and reliability were seen and understood by all different audiences.

The strategy

We knew that for such a broad audience, being seen just once isn't enough. We needed repetition and quality placements to make the message stick, positioning Ethias as a modern, human-centric partner that supports you through every stage of life.

We set up the campaign in two distinct waves:

• Wave 1 (Reach): The first phase focused on introducing the new brand identity to as many unique people as possible.
• Wave 2 (Memorisation): The second phase re-targeted the people from Wave 1. This repetition was designed to make the message familiar and build a strong brand association.

The process

• Our performance plan needed powerful creative assets to work. We developed the central TV ad and all the social media derivatives, making sure every single asset was an expression of human connection, proximity and reliability.
• With these assets in hand, our plan focused on channels that guaranteed high-quality visibility. Wave 1 used a broad mix: Meta, DPG, YouTube, Display, and LinkedIn to reach both B2C and B2B audiences.
• A key tactic was our use of YouTube on large screens. We ran non-skippable ads, which feel more like a traditional, high-impact TV ad. This captured people's full attention and associated the new Ethias brand with a high-quality viewing experience.
• Based on the data of wave 1, we made changes for wave 2 and removed the less performing channels.This allowed us to focus the budget on the channels with the highest quality visibility and the best "power of association." This optimisation worked. Wave 2 delivered most of its impressions to the same audience from Wave 1, which was exactly the plan. This targeted repetition was key to building brand memory and achieving strong results.

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