Prudential's fake brand Unsuay sold superstition to get Malaysians talking about cancer

In 2018 Prudential Assurance Malaysia (PAMB) prepared to launch PRUcancer X, a cancer protection plan aimed at young Malaysians. Research and agency conversations kept hitting the same wall: millennials would not discuss cancer at all. The reflex was superstition — say 'choi!' or touch wood and the topic is dead, because naming the disease feels like inviting it. An uninsured generation was being protected by a wooden block.

PAMB handed the launch to Bonsey Jaden, whose answer was not an insurance campaign but a fake one. They created Unsuay — Malay slang for anti-bad-luck — a gleefully serious brand selling superstition-powered gadgets: the Touch Wood Wood, the Suay Slapper and the Choi Pin, each hardening a reflexive gesture into a product. It ran as an e-commerce Facebook page supported by unbranded Facebook, Instagram and YouTube advertising, with no Prudential logo anywhere.

The unbranded seeding let the joke land before the salespitch. Young Malaysians engaged with a brand that mocked their own instincts, and buying the products demonstrated their uselessness better than any statistic. Only after the flip — superstition can't cover you — did Prudential introduce PRUcancer X as the protection that works when the big C strikes. PAMB's head of digital marketing Natasha Sebastian framed the goal as getting Malaysians 'empowered enough to talk about cancer', and the work took Gold at the Kancil Awards 2019 for Best use of Cultural Insights in Digital Experiences.

Turn the superstition reflex into a gag product, then show it cannot cover you

Millennials deflected cancer talk with 'touch wood' and 'choi', so conventional insurance ads never got a hearing

Selling the superstition as a novelty product made buyers confront its uselessness themselves

Unbranded seeding bypassed the skepticism that greets anything an insurer says

Humor opened the taboo that statistics and scare appeals had only reinforced

When a taboo silences a category, don't shout past it — sell the taboo back to people as an object. A customer laughing at their own reflex is already in the conversation no fear ad can open.

UNSUAY launched in July 2018 and became Prudential's launch platform for PRUcancer X. Marketing-Interactive reported PAMB chose Bonsey Jaden because it 'had the most engaging idea that would resonate with Malaysians'. Regional ECD Adam Chan distilled the insight: 'Someone said the C-word? Touch wood! ... But superstition can't cover you.' At the 2019 Kancil Awards the work won Gold for Best use of Cultural Insights in Digital Experiences, one of Bonsey Jaden Malaysia's top honors that year.