How Vitality Won Awards and Doubled Sales Through Storytelling

Insurance is, by most accounts, one of the toughest products to make exciting. It’s technical, complicated, and often brings up uncomfortable thoughts about mortality. Yet health and life insurance company Vitality managed to not only capture attention but also drive remarkable business results by flipping the entire category narrative on its head.

Their campaign didn’t just win awards—it won the 2024 and 2025 Marketing Week Awards for Excellence in Financial Services and more than doubled the number of lives covered in just six months. Here’s how they did it.

The Challenge: An Industry Built on Fear

For decades, the life insurance industry operated on a simple premise: prepare for the worst. Advertising focused on protecting your family after you’re gone, compensating loved ones for your death, and planning for tragedy. The entire category was built on doom, gloom, and morbid inevitability.

While this approach sold policies, it also meant that thinking about life insurance was about as appealing as planning your own funeral. Vitality recognized this created a fundamental problem: people avoided engaging with something that could genuinely improve their lives because the conversation around it was so depressing.

Additionally, Vitality faced ambitious growth targets for their financial year but needed a new strategy to reenergize the brand and shift public perceptions about health. Working with their creative agency VCCP, they needed to find a way to stand out in a crowded market where most competitors sounded exactly the same.

The Bold Pivot: Redefining What Life Insurance Could Mean

Instead of following industry conventions, Vitality did something radical—they stopped talking about death entirely.

The company had commissioned a comprehensive seven-year study of over 465,000 Vitality members, peer-reviewed by the London School of Economics. The research revealed something remarkable: people who went from inactive to active lifestyles could reduce their mortality by up to 57%, equivalent to increasing their life expectancy by up to five years. Those who became active five days a week—running, walking 10,000 steps—saw the biggest improvements.

This wasn’t just marketing spin. It was hard data that completely reframed what life insurance could be. Rather than compensation for death, Vitality positioned their insurance as a tool to help customers live longer, healthier lives.

The Story: Stanley’s Transformation

Central to Vitality’s storytelling success was an unlikely hero: Stanley, a charismatic dachshund who had been the face of the brand for a decade.

In earlier campaigns, Stanley had been portrayed as miserable because his owner “got active” through Vitality—a humorous way of establishing the brand’s challenger status. But for the “Move Forward with Vitality” campaign launched in October 2023, Stanley underwent a complete transformation.

The new Stanley became a champion of big adventures. He swam across lakes, glided down slides, and even scored the winning goal in a Sunday League football game. Stanley embodied what it meant to adopt a “champion mentality”—to stand for progress and promise to get people’s health moving forward at a time when they felt stuck.

The hero film of their latest campaign, “Life’s Pretty Good,” shows Stanley cruising along a sunny beach in a bright pink Cadillac convertible, bopping along to West Coast hip-hop. As the camera pans out, viewers see the British public engaging in activities like running and cycling, underscoring Vitality’s core message: get more active, get more life.

The 30-second spot directed by Jim Gilchrist is simple, joyful, and represents something entirely different from typical insurance advertising. It’s not about what happens when you die—it’s about fully living while you’re alive.

The Results: When Data Meets Storytelling

The business impact was nothing short of extraordinary:

Sales Performance: In the five months following the campaign launch, sales rose 31% compared to the same period in 2024. Within the first six months, Vitality more than doubled the number of additional lives covered compared to the previous year’s campaign period.

Brand Metrics: Consideration for Vitality Life Insurance grew by five percentage points in the five months following the campaign launch. Brand searches increased 21%, indicating significantly higher awareness and interest. Most impressively, brand trust increased by 11 percentage points—a massive shift in an industry where trust is everything.

Efficiency Gains: The insurer experienced a 19% reduction in cost per lead from lower-funnel social activity, meaning they were acquiring customers more efficiently while growing faster.

Perception Shifts: The number of customers associating the brand with living healthier, longer lives rose five percentage points. Customers describing Vitality as “progressive” or “innovative” grew four percentage points—crucial differentiators in a category often perceived as stale and traditional.

Industry Recognition: Vitality won the Marketing Week Award for Excellence in Financial Services in both 2024 and 2025. Vitality also became the number one recalled brand among insurance advisers, helping them win on both the consumer and B2B fronts.

Social Impact: Through the significant increases in business performance, Vitality helped more people on lower incomes get their health moving forward, not just those with means to take out health or life insurance.

Why This Storytelling Worked

Vitality’s campaign offers critical lessons for brands in any category, especially those operating in traditionally “boring” industries:

1. Find Data That Changes the Conversation

Vitality didn’t just make claims—they invested in rigorous, peer-reviewed research that gave them something genuinely remarkable to say. The five-year life extension finding wasn’t marketing hyperbole; it was credible science. When you have data that powerful, your storytelling becomes about amplifying truth rather than manufacturing interest.

2. Flip the Category Narrative

Every industry has assumptions about how things should be communicated. Vitality looked at the life insurance category’s focus on death and asked: what if we talked about life instead? Sometimes the most powerful storytelling comes from rejecting what everyone else in your industry is doing.

3. Give Your Brand Character Real Character Development

Stanley wasn’t just a cute mascot—he underwent a meaningful transformation that mirrored what Vitality wanted for its customers. From miserable sidekick to adventure-seeking champion, Stanley’s evolution gave the campaign an emotional arc that resonated far more than product features ever could.

4. Make It Feel Good

The decision to shoot Stanley cruising in a pink Cadillac to hip-hop music was brilliant because it injected pure joy into a category defined by anxiety. People don’t share insurance ads, but they share content that makes them feel something positive. Vitality created advertising that felt more like entertainment than a sales pitch.

5. Consistency Over Time Builds Equity

Vitality didn’t achieve these results with a one-off campaign. They’ve been building the “Move Forward with Vitality” platform since October 2023, and Stanley has been their mascot for over a decade. The consistency allowed them to evolve the story rather than start from scratch, building recognition and trust over time.

6. Back Up Your Story With Your Business Model

This is crucial: Vitality doesn’t just tell stories about healthier living—their entire business model rewards it. Members get benefits for being active, from Apple Watch discounts to Starbucks rewards. The storytelling works because it’s authentic to what the company actually does. If your story and your business aren’t aligned, consumers will see through it immediately.

The Broader Implications

Vitality’s success challenges several assumptions about modern marketing:

Purpose Still Drives Results: In 2025, when many brands have pulled back from purpose-driven messaging, Vitality leaned in and proved that authentic purpose still resonates. Their story wasn’t about abstract values—it was about tangibly helping people live longer, healthier lives.

Emotion Beats Features: Vitality could have led with policy features, premium costs, and coverage details. Instead, they led with emotion and aspiration, proving that even in highly rational purchase categories, emotional connection drives consideration and sales.

B2B and B2C Can Share a Story: By becoming the number one recalled brand among insurance advisers while simultaneously winning with consumers, Vitality showed that a strong brand story can work across both audiences when it’s rooted in genuine value.

Legacy Assets Can Evolve: Rather than abandoning Stanley for something new and trendy, Vitality showed how legacy brand assets can be reinvented to feel fresh and relevant. Sometimes the answer isn’t to throw everything out—it’s to evolve what you already have.

Lessons for Your Storytelling

Whether you’re in insurance, software, manufacturing, or any other category considered “dry,” Vitality’s campaign offers actionable insights:

Challenge your category’s conventions. What does everyone in your industry assume must be done a certain way? What if you did the opposite? The biggest storytelling opportunities often come from rejecting the status quo.

Find your unique data point. Vitality had seven years of research to draw from. What evidence, research, or insights do you have access to that could reframe your value proposition in a more compelling way?

Make your audience the hero, not your product. Vitality’s story wasn’t about insurance policies—it was about people living fuller, longer lives. What transformation does your product or service enable for your customers?

Invest in consistency. Award-winning campaigns aren’t built overnight. Vitality has been developing Stanley for over a decade and their “Move Forward” platform for over a year. What story could you build if you committed to it for the long term?

Ensure authenticity. The story only works because Vitality’s business model genuinely supports healthier living through rewards and incentives. Does your story align with what you actually deliver?

Measure what matters. Vitality tracked sales, brand trust, consideration, cost per lead, and perception metrics. They knew exactly what success looked like and could prove the story drove business results.

The Continuing Journey

In January 2025, Vitality launched “Life’s Pretty Good,” the next evolution of their storytelling platform. The campaign continues to run across TV, online video, social media, and radio throughout 2025, ensuring the message reaches audiences wherever they are.

Keith Kropman, Chief Marketing Officer at Vitality, explained the approach: “Launching our campaign this week has been a chance for us to bring to life the real and meaningful difference our life insurance has on our members.”

The campaign demonstrates that in 2025, successful storytelling isn’t about flashy production or celebrity endorsements—it’s about finding a genuine truth about your brand, expressing it in a way that makes people feel something, and backing it up with real value.

Your Next Chapter

Vitality proved that no category is too boring for great storytelling. They took life insurance—arguably one of the least exciting products imaginable—and turned it into a story about adventure, vitality, and living your best life.

What truth about your product or service are you not telling? What data do you have that could reframe your entire value proposition? What character could embody your customers’ journey from where they are to where they want to be?

The brands that win aren’t always the ones with the biggest budgets or the flashiest campaigns. They’re the ones brave enough to tell a different story—and committed enough to make that story real.

Stanley isn’t just cruising in that pink Cadillac for fun. He’s showing us that when you flip the narrative, back it up with evidence, and commit to making it real, you don’t just win awards—you win customers, build trust, and genuinely improve lives.

And that’s a story worth telling.

---

References

1. Marketing Week. (2025). How Vitality smashed sales targets with a fresh take on life insurance. Retrieved from https://www.marketingweek.com/vitality-target-life-insurance/
2. Marketing Week. (2025). How Vitality reinvented its brand mascot to become a health ‘champion’. Retrieved from https://www.marketingweek.com/vitality-reinvented-brand-mascot/
3. Roastbrief US. (2025). ‘Life’s Pretty Good’: Vitality launches new campaign to redefine life insurance. Retrieved from https://roastbrief.us/lifes-pretty-good-vitality-launches-new-campaign-to-redefine-life-insurance/
4. VCCP UK. (2025). Life’s Pretty Good. Retrieved from https://www.vccp.com/uk/work/vitality/vitality
5. Marketing Week. (2025). The best marketing initiatives of 2025. Retrieved from https://www.marketingweek.com/best-marketing-initiatives-2025/