Insurance company AXA France added three words to its standard policy — "and domestic violence" in the relocation section — and achieved 321% traffic growth to its home insurance page in the first month, with new policy acquisitions holding steady at 9% growth for six months. The case won the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix category at Cannes Lions 2026, where, for the first time in several years, multiple major awards went to projects with publicly confirmed business results. The overall festival trend: brands that changed their product instead of increasing advertising spend showed significantly higher returns than competitors running traditional media campaigns.
Why product changes outperform advertising budgets
AXA revised 2.5 million active home insurance policies, automatically extending coverage to cases involving relocation due to domestic violence. The company launched campaigns on television, outdoor advertising, print media, and digital channels, but the core of the strategy remained the policy change itself, not creative execution or media reach. The result: AXA moved from second to first place in consumer preference rankings — 67% versus the industry average of 43% according to Ipsos data.
The key difference between this approach and traditional advertising campaigns is the source of attention. Conventional advertising interrupts the audience to deliver a message; a product change creates a topic worth discussing that the audience spreads on its own. In AXA's case, media support amplified the effect, but the foundation was genuine value for policyholders: the ability to claim compensation when forced to relocate urgently.
Brands willing to make something smaller in scale but more specific in substance and more generous to customers achieve higher returns than competitors relying on attention interruption.
One product versus an entire industry's advertising budget
Australian insurance company Suncorp won the top prize at Cannes Lions 2026 — the Titanium Grand Prix — for its Haven platform, which combines climate, weather, and property data to help homeowners prepare for natural disasters before they strike. Development took two years; published data shows 75% year-over-year growth in residential property insurance policy sales.
The context makes the result even more striking. According to Nielsen, Australia's insurance sector increased advertising spending by 11%, to $504.4 mln, in the year to March 2026 — while more than three-quarters of Australians expressed growing concern about insurance policy costs. The industry spent more on promotion while trust declined. Suncorp invested in creating a tool that customers talk about themselves instead of buying additional advertising placements.
The logic differs fundamentally: a traditional campaign tries to convince audiences that a product is good; a product change makes it genuinely useful, turning customers into word-of-mouth ambassadors. Haven doesn't just insure against damage — the platform helps prevent it, shifting the insurance company's positioning from "we'll pay after disaster" to "we'll help you avoid it."
What this means for the Russian market
Russian brands face a similar situation: rising media placement costs alongside declining effectiveness of interruptive advertising. CPM in digital channels is climbing, organic reach is falling, audiences increasingly use ad blockers and skip video ads. Under these conditions, investing in product or service improvements often delivers higher returns than proportional increases to advertising budgets.
An important caveat: the AXA and Suncorp cases show results for large companies with established customer bases and the ability to spend two years developing product platforms. Directly transferring this approach to small business or startups without adaptation won't work. But the principle scales: a change that solves a real customer problem and creates something worth discussing works better than increasing contact frequency through paid channels.
For the Russian market, a second aspect of AXA's case is also relevant — impact on internal metrics. A policy change increases existing customer loyalty (reduces churn), strengthens the company's appeal as an employer (reduces hiring and retention costs), and creates competitive advantage at equal prices and terms. These effects don't show up in advertising campaign reports, but directly impact customer acquisition costs and lifetime value.
How to evaluate the potential of product changes for your brand
First step: audit friction points in customer experience. Collect support department data from the last three months: recurring complaints, refund requests, questions customers ask before purchase. Rank problems by frequency and impact on conversion. Select three whose solutions are technically feasible within a quarter and don't require radical business process redesign.
Second step: assess the information potential of the change. The solution must be concrete enough for a customer to explain it to an acquaintance in one sentence, and significant enough that they want to. AXA added three words to its policy — the formulation fits in one sentence, the essence is clear without explanation, and emotional significance is high. If explaining the change requires a paragraph of text or a visual diagram, word-of-mouth effect will be weaker.
Third step: measure baseline metrics before launch. Record current traffic to your product page, conversion rate, NPS, repeat purchase share, brand mentions on social media, and support requests on this issue. One month and three months after implementation, compare the metrics. If conversion growth or churn reduction exceeds 5%, the effect is statistically significant; if it exceeds 15%, the change worked as a growth driver, not just a usability improvement.
Checklist: turning product improvement into a marketing asset
- Formulate the change in one sentence, understandable to someone without special knowledge of your category.
- Ensure the change solves a problem customers have already voiced — not a hypothetical need from a strategy session.
- Calculate how many existing customers the improvement will affect and what share will be motivated to tell friends about your brand.
- Prepare media support that amplifies word-of-mouth rather than replaces it: short formats easy to share, not long videos with high production value.
- Set up a feedback collection system: NPS surveys with open-ended questions, social media mention monitoring, analysis of branded search queries.
- Set clear success metrics before launch and publicly commit the team to them — this disciplines the selection of changes with real business value.
Approach limitations and when it won't work
Product changes as a marketing tool require the company to have the freedom to influence the product. If marketing is separated from development by rigid organizational boundaries or the product roadmap is determined only by technical priorities, the approach stalls. In such cases, the first step isn't finding an idea for change, but establishing cross-functional collaboration processes.
The second limitation is time lag. AXA spent several months developing the concept and securing legal approval for policy changes; Suncorp spent two years developing the Haven platform. If your business goal requires results in the current quarter, this approach won't replace performance campaigns with rapid ROI. Product changes work as a strategic tool reducing customer acquisition costs over time, but not as a tactical lever for immediate sales growth.
The third limitation is audience scale. Word-of-mouth mechanics require enough people learning about the change to trigger network effects. For local business or narrow B2B niches, media support comparable in budget to a traditional campaign may be needed — and then the economic advantage fades. In such cases, product improvement remains useful for customer retention but doesn't become an independent acquisition channel.
Frequently asked questions
How to measure product change impact separately from other marketing activities
Record baseline metrics (traffic, conversion, NPS) for three months before the change, then compare with three months after. If no other major campaigns ran during this period, the difference directly relates to the product change. For more precise attribution, survey new customers with a question about what influenced brand choice, and track mentions of the specific improvement on social media and in support inquiries.
How long does it take for a product change to drive noticeable sales growth
AXA saw a 321% traffic increase in the first month, with a 9% growth in new policies sustained for six months. Suncorp demonstrated 75% year-over-year growth, though platform development took two years. Quick results are possible when the change affects a large existing customer base and solves a pressing problem; for new product platforms, the payback horizon typically ranges from one year onward.
Can this approach be applied to small businesses with limited budgets
Yes, if the change addresses a specific pain point for your audience and doesn't require complex technical implementation. For example, a local delivery service could add "deliver within your chosen 15-minute window" instead of "between 2 and 6 PM" — this is a process change rather than a product change, yet it creates competitive advantage and generates word-of-mouth momentum. The key is ensuring the improvement truly matters to customers, rather than simply being convenient for your business.
In brief
- AXA France added three words to its home insurance policy and achieved 321% traffic growth in a month, with 9% new policy growth sustained for six months, moving from second to first place in consumer preferences.
- Suncorp developed a platform to prevent natural disaster damage and saw 75% year-over-year sales growth — while the rest of Australia's insurance market increased ad spending by 11%, reaching $504.4 million, amid declining consumer trust.
- Product changes outperform increased advertising budgets when they solve a real customer problem, create word-of-mouth opportunities, and reach a large portion of your audience.
- For the Russian market, this approach is relevant amid rising media placement costs and declining effectiveness of interruptive advertising; the key constraint is the need for cross-functional collaboration between marketing and product teams.
- Impact can be measured by comparing traffic, conversion rates, and NPS before and after the change, surveying new customers, and monitoring mentions of the improvement in feedback.
- The approach requires anywhere from several months to two years to implement and doesn't replace performance campaigns for short-term ROI goals, but reduces customer acquisition costs over the medium term.
If your product solves real customer problems—we'll show you how to position it in a campaign with measurable business impact. ETC builds strategies on product value, not reach alone.
