Travelers insurance lost its red umbrella logo—a trademark since 1959 and a symbol of the company since 1870—when Citigroup acquired Travelers in 1993. Fourteen years later, for an undisclosed price that the St. Paul company confirmed was in the millions, Travelers got to buy its red umbrella back.
It plays a big part in the ad campaign that Minneapolis-based Fallon launched for Travelers this spring. For the 60-second “Delivery” spot that was shot in New Zealand, Fallon creative directors Scott O’Leary and Ryan Peck had a 30-foot-high, functining umbrella built.
“Ultimately, this guy is delivering the umbrella to somebody who is essentially a client, and then along the way, the company, the [umbrella] metaphor, can’t help but help other people,” Peck says. A stranded circus uses it as a boat to cross a lake; two children fly home in the crook of its handle after their bike breaks down.
The umbrella is “a legitimate icon,” Peck adds. Years after Travelers had stopped using it, consumers still associated it with the company. The “Delivery” spot will run through the summer on network and cable television, with heavy placement in golf programming. Watch it at tcbmag.com/multimedia
Scott O’Leary: “The umbrella was always a metaphor for protection, and the creative thinking became more and more metaphorical: ‘If it’s a metaphor, it’s magical, and if it does magical things, why don’t we make it 30 feet?’ A modern fairy tale is what we started to wrap the whole thing around. ”
Ryan Peck: “Scott and I pretty much rejected typical insurance ads, which are a lot about scaring you. Taking that off the table allowed us to think more in sunnier areas . . . . One thing I had in the back of my mind, in terms of just the way the film looked, was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang—the tonal feel of those ’50s and ‘60s technicolorish things. ”
Scott O’Leary: “Even when we did some CGI [computer-generated imagery], it was based off the real umbrella that we had built. They used that as a take-off point. So when they’re in the boat, we actually had all those people in the umbrella on land on a turntable, moving them . . . . I think part of the reason it’s so visually appealing is because we actually did it. ”
