Travelers’ Lost Dog Ad Turns Tragedy to Triumph

We talk a lot at System1 about emotional journeys in ads, mostly in terms of raising and resolving negative emotion – usually turning sadness into happiness. They can be terrifically effective in achieving the valuable “peak-end” in an ad – having the most intense moment line up with the end, leaving audiences with a powerful and positive feeling.

But even though they’re extremely effective, it’s still rare to see a really dramatic emotional journey in an ad. It’s one thing for an element of sadness or fear to create mild tension in the middle of a commercial, quite another when you have an ad which goes from full-on tragedy to absolute triumph in just a minute of video.

That’s what Travelers pull off in their latest ad. The auto insurance brand’s commercial stars a young man on a routine trip with his dog, who gets involved in an auto accident. He’s injured and in the hospital, but he’s more worried about Max the dog, who’s gone missing. The ad follows one of the Travelers team, who helps put the word out about the missing pet, and eventually helps find Max safe and sound, with the story ending on a dramatic and heart-warming reunion scene.

It’s an ad which takes no prisoners in ramping up sadness. An overturned car, a protagonist in a hospital bed, and of course the plight of Max – it all adds up to an extraordinary surge in sadness on our emotional trace score. And the ad resolves that sadness with equally intense happiness, as the man and his dog are reunited thanks to Travelers.

The result is an ad which blasts through its category norms for both long-term Star Rating, where it lands at a strong 4.6-Stars, and short-term Spike, where it scores an Exceptional rating (the category norm is a Low Spike score). The secret of its success, not surprisingly, is an emotional intensity score way above anything you’d expect from an auto insurance ad.

This isn’t the first time Travelers have pulled off this storytelling trick of making audiences sad then delightfully happy – an ad about a lost wedding ring last year also performed extremely well for the brand. Both ads make strong claims about the brand’s personal touch and the way it goes above and beyond in caring for its customers, so there’s strong messaging in there as well as great storytelling.

Insurance – both auto and personal – is a category which has historically struggled to craft emotionally appealing ads, and the standout players have often relied on humor to make distinctive, feelgood commercials. What Travelers are doing is interesting in that it’s dramatizing the category itself, a risky move as mostly people need insurance during difficult times when things go wrong. But by spotlighting the big emotional wins – finding a lost ring, being reunited with a pet – Travelers are underlying the general sense of relief and protection insurance brings its customers. It’s a clever way of approaching the category, and as this ad shows, it can be exceptionally effective.