Prudential Singapore is inviting people to reconnect in an emotional new spot.
"Our relationships are becoming more and more disconnected," reads the opening on-screen copy. "Can simply looking at someone for 4 minutes improve your relationship?"
The work is reminiscent of Dr. Arthur Aron's experiment, where two people fell in love after he instructed them to ask each other a series of questions while staring into each other's eyes for up to four minutes.
The people Prudential Singapore choose for this social experiment vary in their relationships: husband and wife, parent and child, siblings. We started watching stoically and skeptically—as one is apt to be when so many brands' premises seem to be, "Let's do a social experiment so it'll go viral!"
But halfway in, we sobbed our way through a small pile of tissues.
The relatives interact and react, and it feels special and endearing. It's certainly a gentle way for a life insurance/investment brand to positively connect with consumers when the message can often be a bit of a downer (it's life insurance, after all).
The lovely and emotional piece, created by FCB, ends with the copy, "Your relationships are precious. Protect them," before moving onto a slightly awkward invitation to reconnect with relatives via the #RelationshipReconnect hashtag.
While the YouTube count is respectable (550,000 views as of writing), the video has been scraped and shared millions of times across Facebook. It's a hit all around from Prudential Singapore and a creative, thoughtful example of social experimentation done right.