What a WA Challenger Brand Can Learn From How Budget Direct Took On the Big Two

Budget Direct’s chief growth officer, Jonathan Kerr, spent an hour on the Uncensored CMO podcast in July unpacking 20 years of challenger brand lessons. For all of that time, Budget Direct has been up against Australia’s two largest insurance groups.

That’s big business, but the advice scales down. Below are five of his lessons, what each looks like for a WA business up against national brands, and what not to copy.

Be the best at the thing

Kerr’s title is chief growth officer, yet the goal he described on the podcast was being the best insurer, with the rest following from that. His example was pricing built to reward lower-risk drivers. He sees marketing’s job as telling that story better than anyone else, which assumes the business has a story worth telling.

Canstar gave Budget Direct its national Outstanding Value Award for Car Insurance every year from 2007 to 2025. Its Hall of Fame lists that as the longest winning streak in any Canstar award category. Money magazine has also named Budget Direct Insurer of the Year ten years running, from 2017 to 2026.

When we repositioned Rick Hart Outlet, strategy came first and design second. Rick Hart is an iconic WA name with nearly 50 years of retail experience. In appliance retail everyone’s fighting on price and the business had differentiators that weren’t coming through. The strategy work found that customers “wanted value, sure. But dig deeper, they wanted confidence.” The brand now says both: “Best Advice. Better Deals”.

If you’re a WA business taking on national brands on price alone, sort out the offer before you spend more on ads. Work out who your offer is the best choice for (Kerr’s answer was lower-risk drivers) and make that the story.

Earn a say in your price with insights

Kerr says he sits on Budget Direct’s pricing and underwriting committees, and he draws a firm line between reporting and insight. His team optimises digital campaigns hour by hour, he says, which makes marketing an early warning for the rest of the business. He also wants the raw data immediately, ready to discuss.

In a business your size, the owner usually sets the price and picks the product already. Marketing’s job is to hand the owner something worth acting on. That might be the search terms people use, the quotes lost on price, or the question every prospect asks before buying.

If your marketing report is impressions and clicks, ask for the one thing in it that should change a price, an offer or a product. If nobody can answer, you’re paying for reporting.

Australia is five markets, pick one

Kerr told the podcast that Australia behaves more like five countries than one, and that insurance is fought state by state. He also said many of the big groups’ brands began as state brands, while Budget Direct is a national one.

IAG, which the ACCC describes as “one of the two largest personal insurers in Australia”, grew that way. It bought WA’s SGIO brand in 1998 and began moving those customers to NRMA in 2022. In Victoria, it underwrites RACV-branded insurance through a joint venture with RACV. In 2025 it also bought RACQ Insurance in Queensland.

WA has its own leader. The ACCC says RAC Insurance, which underwrites insurance for WA’s member-owned motoring club, leads the state in both motor and home and contents insurance. The ACCC opposed IAG’s purchase of RAC Insurance in December 2025, and again in September 2026. Together, it estimated, the two would have held about 55 to 65 per cent of WA motor insurance.

The ACCC’s chair, Gina Cass-Gottlieb, pointed to “the historical difficulties rivals have had growing their share in Western Australia”. Auto & General, the company behind Budget Direct, was one of the mid-tier insurers the ACCC considered.

For a national brand, WA is one region in a national plan. For a WA business, it can be the whole plan. That’s a local marketing strategy built on WA proof: local reviews, local projects and WA references in your copy. Then add the terms WA customers search for, so you show up in local search, along with local media and being there in person.

If national brands are your main competitors, compete the way RAC does. The ACCC says it competes “through its well-recognised RAC WA brand, competitive pricing and high quality service”. If you’d like help working out what that looks like for your business, talk to our team in Jolimont.

Pick one idea and keep it for years

Budget Direct ads have carried three campaign ideas in about 18 years, starting with Boojay in 2008. The current one, Insurance Solved, has run since September 2018, eight years and counting.

Boojay, with Michelle and Michael, first went to air in Melbourne in September 2008, according to Budget Direct’s response to a 2009 Ad Standards complaint. The couple made way for animated aliens in 2013, and the aliens and their jingle gave way to Captain Risky in January 2015. In September 2018, a detective called Sarge had replaced Captain Risky under a new line: Insurance Solved.

In 2025, LBB Online called Insurance Solved a long-standing platform. It took Gold for Long Term Effects and Gold for Brand Value at the 2024 Australian Effies.

Kerr puts two conditions on keeping an idea. The first is that consistency only pays if the work is good. The second is reviewing the idea every couple of years, including when it’s performing strongly. In his view, a brand that only asks the question after a bad patch will always end up changing. He says that when he rebriefs the agency, he asks for two things: how the current idea could get better, and whether there’s another way.

Kerr says the brand keeps its own sonic and visual devices. Those are distinctive brand assets: the sounds, characters and visual cues people recognise as yours before they’ve seen your name.

At WA scale, the same discipline means one line, one look and one recurring device, kept for years. Refresh the executions and keep the idea. Book the review two years out, so a slow month doesn’t make the decision for you. We’ve argued that you should keep running the ads that work, and this is the same logic applied to the idea behind them.

If you change your tagline or your look every time a new marketing manager or agency arrives, stop. Pick the idea, set a review date two years out, and put the energy into better versions of it.

Make it recognisable with your eyes shut

Boojay was built for the ear. Budget Direct told Ad Standards in 2009 that the French pronunciation of “Budget” was there to make the brand name more memorable. Kerr says the name was the brand’s biggest asset and, back then, its biggest problem, because of what the word “budget” suggests.

If you run radio or audio ads on Spotify, use one voice and one sign-off, every time. Video ads should pass the same test with the screen off: the soundtrack alone should tell people whose ad it is.

Make the character sell the brand: what Captain Risky taught Budget Direct

Kerr told the podcast that when Budget Direct showed people a picture of Captain Risky, they named the character. He needed them to name Budget Direct.

The character arrived in January 2015: a stuntman complaining that Budget Direct won’t insure him. Mumbrella reported that the launch ad ended on the tagline “We don’t insure Captain Risky to keep prices low”. Kerr told Mumbrella at the time that the aim was to “help people understand how we can offer award winning insurance at such great prices”. That’s positioning built on something you refuse to do, turned into a character.

Kerr describes Captain Risky as built to be the opposite of a Budget Direct customer. In his account, the character outgrew the brand: he took the recognition, and Budget Direct came second. Sarge, he says, works the other way: when people are shown Sarge, they name Budget Direct. You’ll find the ads on Budget Direct’s TV ads page.

A brand mascot carries the same risk at any budget. So does a founder as the face of the business, a spokesperson or a recurring funny scenario. If your best-known asset is one of those, show it to a few customers with your name and logo covered, and ask who it’s for. If they name your business, it’s working for your brand. If they name the character or the person, it’s working for itself. If they can’t say, it isn’t linked to anything yet, and the fix is usually more time and more consistency.

What a challenger brand can copy from Budget Direct

Kerr acknowledges that circumstances differ from one business to the next. Three of Budget Direct’s are out of reach for most WA businesses:

• The scale. Budget Direct employs more than 3,000 people, and Kerr describes a marketing team built up in-house, gradually.
• The media. Kerr says it plans and buys media in-house, directly, though he allows that for many businesses a good media partner can be a big help.
• The production. The Drum reported that the 2018 Sarge launch was directed by British director Daniel Kleinman.

If you’re a WA business spending a few thousand a month on marketing, copy the order Budget Direct did things in.

1. Build the offer for a defined customer
2. Feed what marketing learns into price
3. Know your market
4. Pick one idea and give it years.

Kerr also says good people want to work with a business that knows its numbers. At your scale, whoever does your marketing should sit close enough to see the numbers and the customers, and should know WA. The written version of all this is a brand strategy: who you’re for, what you’re best at and the messages you’ll repeat for years.

Where a WA challenger brand starts

You probably won’t outspend the national brands in your category, and Budget Direct’s story doesn’t ask you to. Start with the offer: one you’d back against anyone’s, for a customer you can name. Then pick the one idea you’re willing to run for years, and book its first review before you need it. Both are decisions challenger brands of any size get to make.

If you’d like help working out your offer and your one idea, come and do it with us in a brand strategy workshop.

Jack Headford

Account Manager & Operations Lead