A Heartwarming Story From a Surprising Brazilian Brand

How does South America’s biggest insurance firm make a great Christmas advert? By going with a tried-and-tested method that has worked so well in other markets – telling a magical and emotional story.

The story Bradesco Seguros and agency AlmapBBDO have chosen to tell with their ad “A Busca” is a tale of an alien who lands its spaceship on Earth and a girl who befriends it and makes it part of the family for the holiday season. The alien experiences love and happiness on Earth but it’s soon time for its spaceship to return to the stars again, and there’s a sad moment when the girl fears she’s lost her new friend. Fortunately, the alien has used a trick to launch the spaceship with no passenger, and the story ends with the alien and its human friend returning to her home. The ad has a powerful soundtrack, with a new version of the classic “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” capturing its characters’ yearning for connection and a secure place they can call home.

Why do stories like this work so well in ads? There’s a lot of connection and communication between the charming alien and the humans it meets on Earth, which makes the story more emotional. And the story also follows an emotional arc, with a peak of sadness near the end when it looks like the alien has left for the stars. But of course that resolves into Happiness in the final seconds and leaves the audience with a positive overall response. Narrative arcs like this are an exceptional way for an ad with a strong storyline to boost emotional response in their audience.

Storytelling is a way for a brand like Bradesco Seguros to transcend its functional category and enter the world of emotion. But the ad is not unrelated to the brand. In fact the story is specifically crafted to tie in with Bradesco Seguros’ “Always With You” tagline, reinforcing the brand’s values of unity and community and reinforcing the sense that an insurance company is there to protect and make a long-term commitment to its customers.

How well do these emotions transmit to ordinary Brazilian viewers? In the Test Your Ad results, Bradesco Seguros’ ad performs very well. It earns a 4.4-Star Rating, which is far above the 2.7-Star average for Brazil’s TV ads, and predicts strong long-term effects on market share given the right investment. The ad also gets a strong rating for short-term Spike, again outperforming the Brazilian average. And even though the ad is not directly about insurance, the brand comes across well, with above average Brand Fluency.

In a serious market sector like Insurance, making Christmas ads, let alone ones with such powerful emotional storytelling, is a bold tactic. The warm audience response to Bradesco Seguros’ delightful alien and its story shows that it’s not just retailers or telecoms brands who can entertain in the holiday season.