Veygo
A 99 Flake, 1 dance move and a doubled awareness score
We doubled unprompted brand awareness for Veygo by building a PR and social programme that spoke to young drivers in the moments and places they were actually paying attention to.
The challenge
Veygo, a short-term and learner insurance brand, had a visibility problem. With a limited budget and a need to build brand strength independently of its parent company, it needed a strategy that could grow awareness among 17 to 25 year olds and their parents.
Insurance is a low-interest category for this audience. To stay front of mind, Veygo needed to show up in conversations that were genuinely relevant to their lives.
Our approach
Building a data engine from scratch
We built a programme around the moments young drivers and their parents were already paying attention to, monitoring the news cycle closely to find the angles that would give Veygo a credible, useful voice in conversations it wouldn’t otherwise have been part of.
We knew what made this age group stop scrolling, what their parents worried about, and what publishers covering this audience would actually want to run.
Stories ranged from how bank holiday passengers face fines for drinking in cars and how a 99 Flake could land a driver with a £200 fine and six points on their licence, to a Freedom of Information-backed revelation that impersonation cheating on driving tests was on the rise, as wait times lengthened. Each story gave Veygo an authentic reason to show up in the titles its audience read, without feeling like an ad.
Taking road safety to TikTok
We also looked for ways to reach young drivers where they spent their time socially.
Dooring (when a driver opens their car door into the path of an oncoming cyclist) causes more than 500 accidents across England, Wales and Scotland every year. And 35% of drivers admit they don’t check for cyclists before opening their door. The Dutch Reach, a simple technique where you open your car door with your far hand, forcing you to turn and look, can prevent it. The challenge was making a road safety habit feel worth knowing about to an audience with no particular reason to think about it.
We spoke to young drivers through our Real Folk Panel confirming TikTok was where they spent their time, and the content they engaged with most was entertaining, participatory and easy to share. The same message that would go unnoticed in a traditional format had a chance if it arrived as a dance challenge.
Working with Liara Barussi, one of the UK’s most respected choreographers, whose collaborations include Stormzy and Adidas, to create a simple, memorable routine built around the Dutch Reach movement. We then partnered with five British influencers to seed the challenge, giving the campaign an organic feel and the credibility of voices the audience already trusted.
The impact
The always-on programme delivered well beyond its targets. Veygo achieved 534 pieces of coverage against a KPI of 180. PR was Veygo’s strongest performing channel, second only to TV.
Unprompted brand awareness doubled, with Veygo’s credibility score reaching an all-time high of 60%. Media became Veygo’s top earned channel for driving awareness, with 27% of Veygo’s audience reporting they had heard of the brand through newspapers or magazines, an uplift of 5% year on year.
For a brand with a limited budget operating in a low-interest category, those are the results of a strategy built on knowing the audience well enough to reach them on their own terms.
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