What do Winston ‘The Wolf’ Wolfe and Optimus Prime have in common?

They’ve both advertised insurance for Direct Line, with astonishing success.

Mark Evans, the marketing maverick behind this unpredictable “Relaunch of the decade”, spoke to our CEO Ian Henderson and Selbey Anderson‘s CEO Dom Hawes on their Unicorny podcast to discuss the rationale behind these monumentally effective campaigns, and the decision to retire ‘The Wolf’ well before anyone expected him to.

In the conversation, the team took a deep dive into the background behind the iconic Pulp Fiction-inspired advert that revitalised Direct Line. Dom, Ian and Mark discussed transactional trust vs. relational trust when it comes to customer acquisition. Mark explains his ‘choose your future philosophy’, the joy of pitching, and also gives his take on why they wanted to move on from the Winston Wolf campaigns while they were still empirically successful.

Controversially, while other industry pundits are telling us that ads don’t wear out and need more time to wear in, here’s a marketing leader who broke the rules and reaped reward.

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