It would be so easy

 
Brand development Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett communicates that ÖKK Basel is now called Sympany and shoots a commercial with Dani Levy. 
ÖKK - Öffentliche Krankenkassen Schweiz - is moving with the times and wants to be more agile in the highly competitive market in future. For this reason, the regional groups ÖKK Basel and ÖKK Landquart have split up While the insurance companies in the south and east will continue to operate under ÖKK and will be managed by the newly formed Y&R Group (see box and campaign on page 7), the insurance group ÖKK Basel is changing its name to Sympany.
The development of this new brand is being launched by Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett. SFLB won the account in a pitch. Sympany will work the Swiss market on a segment-specific basis from January 1. Before a concrete campaign follows, the advertisers only want to "raise awareness" for the new name Sympany (which was already developed before the pitch and not by SFLB), as CD Peter Brönnimann explains.
The creatives based their concept on the assumption that health insurance companies and insurers are seen as "bureaucratic, complicated and non-transparent". Consumers also tend to perceive their advertising as artificial and not very authentic.
Sympany now wants to "bring a breath of fresh air into the industry". And, of course, with its advertising. Sympany is positioning itself as the "refreshingly different" insurance company. This is intended to actively set Sympany apart from its competitors. The message: Sympany simplifies people's lives, relieves them of the tedious and frees them from the complicated.
SFLB demonstrates this for the time being with three funny commercials. These show everyday situations that suddenly become incomprehensibly complicated or laborious. For example in the "Coffee Shop" spot: a craftsman walks into a modern coffee shop and simply orders a coffee. The sales clerk asks him whether he would like an espresso, latte or cappuccino. And later, whether he wants a single latte or double latte, in short, tall or grande size, with beans from Latin America or Africa...? - Questions after questions that overwhelm the poor man who only wants a coffee. He gives up and desperately orders just a mineral water. Then comes the claim: "We think life should be simpler again. Sympany, the new insurance. Refreshingly different."
A second spot shows how a husband-to-be struggles for words at the wedding like a professionally deformed lawyer with a complex plea, when he should really just say "yes".
For these sketch-style spots, SFLB wanted a director "who knows his way around film comedies". They found Dani Levy from Basel, who has won six Lolas in Germany with feature films such as "Alles auf Zucker" and has recently hit the headlines with the wicked satire "Mein Führer - Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler". Dani Levy, who starred as "Pepperoni" in the first Swiss TV series "Motel" and has never shot a commercial before, agreed immediately. After all, his mother is also insured with ÖKK - or now Sympany.
While "Coffee Shop" and "Wedding" were produced by Levy and Condor, SFLB had a third spot shot by Pumpkin Film and Martin Werner "for reasons of a broader spectrum". The spots will be on air from November 9. From 2008, an extended campaign with the slogan "refreshingly different" will also be used.
ÖKK Basel (with the legally associated brands ÖKK Schweiz and Krankenkasse 57) has developed in recent years from a regional health insurance company into an insurance group operating throughout Switzerland. In future, the company wants to focus even more strongly than before on its customers and provide services in a "refreshingly different" way. To this end, the Group is streamlining its organization and operating under the Sympany umbrella brand.
With 400 employees, Sympany will serve 188,000 basic insurance policyholders and 6,000 corporate customers and generate sales of CHF 750 million, as Marketing and Sales Manager Andreas Rehmann explains.
Andreas Panzeri