Beyond the Brief: Inside Bastion Shine’s Playfully Chaotic Brand World for Tower Insurance

Tower Insurance recently introduced Kiwis to a trio of chaotic new characters in its latest campaign via Bastion Shine: Miss Haps, Miss Takes and Miss Fortune. Designed to bring to life the unpredictability of everyday accidents, the work signals a bold shift for the brand. In this edition of Beyond the Brief, Bastion’s Chief Creative Officer Oliver Green and General Manager of Social Holly Dean take us behind the scenes of The Misses to discuss how a category not traditionally known for creativity became the launchpad for a richly built brand world complete with a 24-part social series and distinct character arcs.

What was the original brief from Tower, and how did it evolve into the concept of ‘The Misses’?

Oliver Green: Cut through! Most ads are born apologetic, meek and invisible and being invisible is only good if you need to slip into a meeting late – and who wants to slip into more meetings? So, the unsaid brief was to make work that isn’t insipid and invisible especially because Tower sits in a famously low interest category. People don’t think about insurance, until the worst happens, and they think: Holy shit, who knew chandeliers were so flammable –  are we insured? So… yes, raise brand awareness, differentiate but, make work that doesn’t disappear into the background.

There were discussions in the early part of the creative process with Michelle, Kush, Fran, Angela and Jocelyn (the Tower team) about wanting to build a world, starting with some ‘brand assets’ that we could use through-the-line so we knew we’d be looking for something like a character or characters. Something we own. Something we can repeat. Something we can build on.

The Misses started on the-wall next to a family that were in a reality show living with an angry goat named Clarence, A shortsighted sasquatch who loved wearing high-heels and a tiny tornado that just wanted to be loved. But those other concepts migrated from the-wall to the bottom drawer when the Misses showed up. We all immediately saw the possibilities with these characters. Three personifications of chaos that turn up and make people’s lives hard and that we can use through line and for years to come. (R.I.P Clarence The Angry Goat. And call me if you want a script about a Sasquatch in Louboutins).

Holly Dean: Yeah and from the moment we had the characters Miss Haps, Miss Takes and Miss Fortune it was clear they deserved more than a 45″ and absolutely belonged in social.

We approached social not as a space for chasing likes or comments, but as a moment for a mental nudge. A “hmm, maybe I should get insurance” kind of pause. To earn that, we knew it had to be surprising enough to stop a thumb mid-doom scroll, something unexpected, not a one-shot wonder, but a format we could flex. Social’s often treated like the tag-on cousin of a campaign, there by obligation, not intention. But we saw, or rather we see it, as the place where the brand can really live, with a bit more creative freedom. And to Tower’s credit, once we showed what was possible, they were all in.

It all evolved from a two-word pitch to Oli: “Miss Adventures?”.  The Misses and social were made for each other, and thanks to Fran and Joce, we got to build something smart, playful, and properly ownable together.

Insurance isn’t exactly known for playful branding. What gave you the confidence to go character-led in such a traditionally conservative category?

OG: I think the question answers itself. “Insurance isn’t exactly known for playful branding …” That’s the opportunity. Some calculator-botherer in the adver-sphere figured out that 40-50% of ads simply go unnoticed. Last year, advertisers globally wasted between $500–750 billion – mainly through invisible ads.

How did you land on the idea of personifying accidents – and what was the creative thinking behind the distinct personalities of Miss Haps, Miss Takes, and Miss Fortune?

OG: The development happened over a pretty extended time frame. The Misses started out as three slightly tipsy dahhhhhlings, then they become three quite dark (and a little menacing) saboteurs – but when we checked in with some focus groups – it was felt they were too dark…  so we were back on the pens.

There’s glass and clay in every idea – parts that will break the idea if you mess with them and parts you can push around and mould. The glass in this idea were three characters, their names, their roles and the fact the Tower thwarted them. The clay was the nuance in the characters. So, we kept the glass intact but moulded the clay into these three hyper positive, slightly magical entities that, “Phipppppp” pop in and out of people’s lives leaving behind a trail of broken possessions and damage. Their relentless positivity and passion for their work helped us to get around the darkness and negativity that could’ve come through when you personify problems that real people have to deal with in their real lives. But more importantly, they helped bring to life Tower’s role screaming into life – what better way to show Tower as the protagonist brand hell bent on helping New Zealanders stay one step ahead of chaos, than adding three streaks of silver clad chaos to the mix? The insight that life’s accidents rarely come with warning, the Misses gave us a way to visualise those unpredictable times in life while reinforcing Tower’s proactive, supportive role in their customers’ life.

So, we had these characters pretty well articulated in our heads – but it was working with director Arundati Thandur (commission her for your next project – she’s fantastic) and the team at Finch where they came to life. Some great casting by the wonderful Catch massive and just a huge team of fantastic production talent (shout out Neville!) brought them off page and into the World in a way I’m immensely pleased with.

HD: From a social lens, personification is a bit of a cheat code. Everyone has had that “oh no” moment, that slip, that spill, that smashed phone (or burst pipe). By turning those moments into people, it made them tangible, familiar, and just a little bit lovable, that gave us the right chemistry for social.

The 24-part social series is a major creative element. Holly, what was your vision for it, and how did you ensure it complemented the broader campaign?

HD: The ATL had already given us rich playful characters so our vision was to extend that into something longer lasting, made specifically for how people actually consume content i.e vertically, quickly, and emotionally.

We designed The Missadventures as an episodic series, not a set of ads. Each episode plays like a short skit, a little weird, lo-fi chaos, and all character. Letting the audience piece it together. Everything from tone to pacing was built for attention that an insurance provider wouldn’t normally get.

Rather than complimenting the broader campaign it was more about building a world, which gave us permission to go further with how we used social. Something with a story arc, recurring gags of the small realities, that at first may seem random, but shows the unexpected daily chaos that can happen.

We didn’t want to treat this like “content from an insurer.” We treated it like entertainment that just happened to be made by one.

OG: Holly recognised straight away that we had these characters to play with – she had such a clear, strong vision for Tower social and both me and the Tower team were 1000% behind it. All hail Holly.

Was 24 always the magic number – or did the ideas flow so freely that it just made sense to go big?

HD: Accidents aren’t just dramatic, more often they’re kinda small, unexpected moments that throw your day into chaos, like that pole you swear wasn’t there yesterday. Social let us lean into that with freedom. Once we embraced the structure of episodic chaos, the scenarios kept coming. Flooded bathrooms? Check. White carpet and blueberries? Obviously. Car park dings? Absolutely. It was a rare moment where scale didn’t dilute the idea, it made it better.

We played with formats like shooting from a ring camera POV which gave us the flex to have reoccurring scenarios. From a story perspective we broke our content up into acts; introducing characters, chaos, resolution, and soon enough we had just over 24 ideas worth making, it felt ambitious, but still digestible for our audience, and our production sanity.

When will the social series drop – and should we expect anything different in tone or structure across platforms?

HD: The episodes have already started to drop. We’re treating this like a proper series: one episode per week.

The tone stays consistent across the board, it’s dry, slightly absurd, and rooted in Kiwi humour, but we flex the structure depending on the platform. Instagram Reels gets the full series. Facebook gets the highlights. It all feels like part of the same world. A world where chaos wears coordinated suits and smiles sweetly while knocking over your TV.

The campaign feels distinctly Kiwi. How did cultural nuance influence the tone, language and character development?

OG: We leaned into genuine casting, thought out locations and that understated irreverence that we Kiwi are famous for.

HD: Even the way The Misses dress feels like your aunties if they worked in admin but also happened to be minor gods of misfortune. That cultural grounding is what makes the whole thing work. It doesn’t feel like an insurance campaign trying to be funny. It feels like New Zealand… just slightly weirder.

Looking back on the creative journey, what are you most proud of with this campaign?

OG: A team effort that produced work that is nothing like anything in the category. I’m proud that we didn’t take the brief at face value. We looked at a famously forgettable and almost apologetic category and asked: What if we didn’t do that?  The Tower team backed an idea all the way through. From the 45” to the social episodes (that keep this world alive week after week). And maybe most importantly – we didn’t just create a campaign. We created the start of a world.

HD: We backed social as the long tail of the idea and hopefully made something people actually want to watch from a brand they weren’t expecting to deliver it. I’m proud of how collaborative it was. There was shared clarity from the start, and trust to keep pushing. If people laugh and think about insurance? Honestly, that’s a win.