One Question, Four Answers

Beach was our first CTV spot, and a deliberate departure from how Global Rescue usually spoke. The brand had always led with fear — the long list of things that can go wrong abroad. We saw an opening to do the opposite: a mother on a Caribbean beach, watching her family in the surf, her internal monologue moving through everything she doesn’t have to worry about because she has Global Rescue. Same information, none of the dread.

There were two strong instincts on the team about how it should feel — one upbeat and multi-shot, one a single slow arc shot, quiet and reflective. Both had real merit, so rather than choose between them, we shot both: same script, same cast, two cuts, A/B tested on MNTN. Each found its own audience. Testing the disagreement taught us more about our market than settling it would have.

Airport took on the most persistent confusion in our category: people assume Global Rescue is travel insurance. It isn’t, and the gap between what each one actually does is the whole pitch. We borrowed the structure of the old Mac-vs-PC ads and built the difference into a conversation — two travelers at a baggage carousel, one home from an adventure with Global Rescue, one with travel insurance — until the insurance traveler’s suitcase bursts open and he gets the line: “Well, at least that’s covered.”

This was the hardest one to land. The first cut came back flat — a performance that didn’t work, enough that there was serious question at the leadership level about whether to run it at all, and with the production budget already spent, a reshoot wasn’t an option. What it needed was patience: working back through alternate takes, supporting the search for a soundtrack that could lift the whole piece, and staying with a project that would have been easier to set aside. We got there. It went out on limited release, earned broader distribution, and became the strongest performer in the series — a 1,300% ROAS peak in Q1 2026.

Bathtub Slip was the biggest swing — the furthest the brand had ever traveled from its own voice. The idea was a straight parody of the mid-2000s Cialis ads: two clawfoot tubs at the edge of a safari, golden light, robes, champagne, a voiceover that plays it completely sincere. We ran it past the CEO, who was looking for something with viral potential, and got the green light to build it. Then the husband stands, gives the knowing look — and slips. Record scratch. Now you’re in a Global Rescue ad, and his wife is already calmly on the phone getting help.

It’s finished, it’s good, and it hasn’t run. The war in Iran broke out just as we wrapped, with Global Rescue in the news for real extractions in the region. Releasing a comedy spoof in that window would have tied the brand to a laugh at exactly the wrong moment. Holding a finished ad everyone was proud of was harder than shipping it, but the timing had to serve the brand, not the calendar. It runs when the moment is right — likely Q3.

The starting point for this one was an instinct I’d had as a longtime traveler: people are most open to thinking about protection not in a crisis, but while they’re packing — excited and a little anxious in equal measure. That became a family getting ready for a trip, a kid running through what-if questions, and a parent answering each one with the same calm refrain: “We call Global Rescue.” Every scenario is a real use case, but it plays as a game, not a sales pitch. The detail that makes it land — the parents quietly packing a backup of the kid’s stuffed dinosaur — came from my own life as a parent.

By this cycle our MNTN spend had earned enough production credits to do more, so rather than save them, we used them to shoot a second concept on the same set with the same cast: drop the child, and let the what-ifs go where adults take them when no kids are listening. We brought it to a studio we’d worked with and trusted, gave them real room to shape it, and their version came back stronger than the brief we’d handed over. Two finished ads from one shoot — and a reminder that giving good collaborators creative latitude tends to make the work better. Both are final and begin distribution next week.