BUPA shifts focus from products to brand work

by Mark Sweney, Marketing 26-Jan-05

BUPA is overhauling its advertising strategy with a move away from product-led executions in favour of an umbrella brand campaign.

The private healthcare company has previously used different messages across a variety of media to promote its portfolio of services, which include care homes and health insurance. It will now adopt a single, integrated brand idea to commu-nicate the general health benefits BUPA offers.

The umbrella strategy, created by WCRS, will introduce the strapline 'Feel better with BUPA'. It spells the end of the previous strapline, 'The personal health service'.

The campaign, which breaks this week, is expected to run beyond 2005.

The strapline will be applied across BUPA's £11.5m activity, including press and radio ads, and direct marketing.

Brand advertising will be used in its direct-response work for the first time. In the past, it has used tailor-made ads for the daytime TV audience.

Eileen Folan, brand and planning director at BUPA, confirmed that the campaign marked a change in promotional direction.

Television ads feature a young girl who has hurt herself. When her mother kisses her, she enters a make-believe BUPA world, where she is made to feel better.

There will be four different press executions. Each will use the umbrella theme but also push product messages, such as prompt treatment and results, quality of care and cleanliness of hospitals.

One aim of the campaign is to reassure the public about the quality of BUPA health services. Press ads in particular will position BUPA as a safe medical choice at a time when the cleanliness of NHS hospitals has been called into question due to the rise of 'superbug' infections.