Award Applications

At Direct Line, we’ve always been passionate advocates of the fact that tech should serve a real purpose to both customer and company – for us it shouldn’t be an afterthought or a nice-to-have, but rather a meaningful addition to the value chain.

If there is a clear value to customers, then it is up to the sector to educate consumers and communicate the value that these advances can deliver.

Our fixer mentality has been the purpose for all of the innovations we’ve invested in; if it helps us fix a problem for customers then we will deliver it, and we’ve made sure that this is always communicated to our customers.

Purposeful innovation: Fleetlights
To show how we are taking the need to move from a restitution model to a prevention model seriously, we applied our high performance ‘fixing’ to a unique project: Fleetlights, drones that light your way on the path ahead.

It’s so important to be proactively seeking solutions and new ways of looking at the problems your customers have. At Direct Line, a recurrent problem we saw is the feeling of being unsafe on darkly lit streets, especially when long winter nights approach. Distressingly, it’s not an irrational fear: despite there being 7.5 million streetlights in the UK, more people are killed on the roads in the darker months of autumn and winter due to poor visibility. It’s simply not possible for there to be efficient lighting absolutely everywhere, so we decided to find a way to fix this. The result was Fleetlights.

Having identified that the issue probably stemmed from the fact that streetlights are unmovable and vary in number across urban and rural areas, we collaborated with leading technology expert Michael Oborne of Mission Planner to create new ‘Fleet Control’ technology.

The Fleet Control prototype software enables Fleetlights to be ordered via GPS and mobile technology directly from the user’s smartphone. The technology lights a pre-determined path ahead of the user, while responding and adapting to changes in the user’s journey. Whether walking home alone from a country pub after a shift, cycling somewhere or driving at up to 60mph, the drones will light your path. All of this works with the GPS on your smartphone and is as straightforward as ordering a taxi.

As the issue of darkness and the feelings of vulnerability that come with it are more prevalent outside of urban areas, where there is more open space, and less chance that streets are properly lit, we tested the drones in a place with such little light that it’s actually an International Dark Sky Reserve: Petworth.

In this situation, using drone technology to address a specific customer problem enabled us to demonstrate thinking outside of the box and future-gazing in a tangible way. It also showed customers that we are one step ahead on issues that might affect them. However, the aim of Fleetlights was more than just to have a striking campaign. We were very clear that we wanted to open up a discussion around the problem and create a starting point for future solutions. Both the hardware and software designs were created from scratch and are open-source, making them accessible to any group that may wish to build on the prototype and apply the tech to a community.

The campaign has had recognition as far and wide as Argentina and Australia, reinforcing our belief that it is possible to lead meaningful and valuable disruption in the insurance sector and be on the front foot when it comes to problem-solving for consumers.

The campaign was responsible for:
• 7m+ content views
• 13,700 positive reactions
• 43.3% increase in searches for “Direct Line” and “directline”
• 10.8% increase in consideration from our target YouTube audience of 25 to 54 year olds

Technology offers a fantastic opportunity for insurers to transform the sector. However, for the team at Direct Line the future will always be about how we can solve the next problem for customers, so technology will only ever be one part of that. For us, the bigger issue – as illustrated by Fleetlights – is how we can move to a model of prevention. How can we use all of the tools at our disposal to create offerings and services that add value to consumers’ lives? How can we prevent them having accidents? How can we show we’re future-ready, innovative, and always thinking about protecting customers? For us, this is the holy grail for insurers over the coming years and we believe it’s time we all stepped up to that challenge.

Agencies who worked on the campaign included, Saatchi & Saatchi, Mediacom, Unity and The Media Foundry.
The video can be found here.