Afterlife in New Zealand

The video above is a New Zealand TV ad for life insurance. The company entered the New Zealand market in 2011, and has grown quite a lot since then—enough to begin frequent TV advertising and TV programme sponsorship. The ad takes a somewhat unique approach to selling life insurance, even if the metaphor by itself isn’t particularly new or innovative. Mostly, it’s also very New Zealand-ish, and that’s always welcome.

The ad features the common enough depiction of the time immediately after death as being a waiting room—heck, even the movie Beetlejuice featured the idea in its end. What happens in the ad’s waiting room, however, has a lot of very Kiwi interaction and chat.

I really like the ad—its humour, its Kiwi-ness, its acting and direction. And, for so very many reasons, the ad could never be broadcast on free-to-air TV in my native USA. That is, of course, just another reason I like it, because I kind of like being contrary. Sometimes.

The full version, below, has been edited down to the one minute version above, along with some versions that are shorter still. The full version features all the bits used in the shorter versions, but in a more coherent story, and makes some sense out of some of the imagery in the shorter ads, including the one up top (all the versions are available are on their YouTube Channel). Here’s the long version:



The ads are trying to get people to plan for their inevitable demise by getting their life insurance sorted, and that’s a really good thing to do: Too many people really do think they’ll have more time. I like the kinda quirky, kinda irreverent approach the ad takes, and that it embraces Kiwi-ness. The last thing we need is another dreary, lofty ad selling us insurance without making us feel it. This ad won’t be for everyone—no ad ever is—but for me, and probably for its target market, it’s spot on.