AXA | THREE WORDS | 2024
They Added Just Three Words to an Insurance Contract / AXA "THREE WORDS"
There's an ad that won four Cannes Lions just by adding three words to a home insurance contract. No clever copy, no eye-catching visuals. Just an extraordinary place to put some extra words.
The problem
In France, home insurance is legally required. Meanwhile, reports of domestic violence have kept rising in the country, and many victims were unable to leave their homes for financial or physical reasons. Insurance covered things like fire and flooding, but not violence happening inside the home.
The insight
The main reasons many victims can't flee their homes are money and having nowhere to go. AXA focused on this and asked: could the function home insurance already has—providing an emergency place to stay when a home becomes unlivable—be applied not just to disasters, but to domestic violence too? Rather than raising awareness of a social issue, this was about changing the mechanics of insurance itself.
The idea
AXA added the three words "and domestic violence" right after the "fire" and "flood" clauses in home insurance contracts. When a victim calls an emergency hotline, a driver comes to pick them up, and if they have children, they're taken together to a safe place like a hotel. Psychological and legal support is also provided free of charge. This change was applied retroactively to all 2.5 million existing home insurance contracts.
What happened
The campaign launched in France in March 2024. Within one month of going into effect, 121 women were protected through this system. At the 2025 Cannes Lions, it won the Titanium Grand Prix, Direct Grand Prix, and Creative Business Transformation Grand Prix, among others, and in 2026 it also won the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix.
Afterthought
I thought this was a job about writing copy, but it turned out to be a job about rewriting a line in a contract. I feel like I just witnessed the moment advertising crossed over from "telling" to "changing." Who knew just three words could carry so many lives with them.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2024
