Physicians Mutual Insurance Company: Navigating retirement nightmares by Intermark Group

Physicians Mutual Insurance Company has launched a new brand campaign addressing the anxiety experienced by the ever-increasing number of baby boomers transitioning into retirement, and it’s brought in amiable comic actor John Michael Higgins to face a band of monsters and help relieve that anxiety.

The spots feature various “fever dreams” of soon-to-be retirees: late-night zombies calling out the confusion of Medicare (‘Nightmares’), a vampire dentist terrifying a patient with Medicare’s lack of dental coverage (‘Dr. Acula’), and an employee on the verge of retirement, panicking in the cafeteria about his lack of coverage (‘Food Fright’).

All these events are observed and reflected upon by the company’s new brand spokesperson Higgins, who spells out the cure for pre-retirement high anxiety and leverages humor to break the tension in stressful retirement planning moments. He helps introduce the scenarios and give sound advice. In one instance, he poses as a cake decorator in a cafeteria as a man has nightmares that he is pantsless in line for food and is teased that his “premiums are showing.”