Marketing Awareness.

Modern marketers tend to get very excited by ideas of conversation and engagement with customers. Given that they are aware how many images and messages each of us receive every day, they have become less impressed by the more basic aim of generating awareness. This, I think, is why this pun-based campaign has received such criticism from within the advertising world.

Some complain that the imitation of Morgan Freeman is a deceitful hijacking of the actor's gravitas while others just deem it trite, shouty advertising disguised as something else. But that is to overlook context.

It's an ad for insurance. Insurance stubbornly remains a commodity business where price trumps service because we buy it before we need it. The engagement with the product/service occurs at a time of distress and not at a time of purchase.

In a commodity business, awareness is key. You want your customer to have your name come to mind when they consider the purchase. It's brutally simple. A differentiation strategy predicated on engagement ignores the mindset of the audience.

From a business strategy perspective you don't want to be in the diminishing-margin commodity game, but from a marketer's perspective you have to accept that an increasing number of industries are becoming commoditised. If you're working in or for one, you can try to get your boss/client to adapt their offering, but in the mean time, you have to swallow your pretensions and do what the context demands.