Smartpolis Insurance and Voskhod staged the world's first car-curling competition in Russia in March 2017, earning a Cannes Lions Bronze and two Golden Drum
ARCHIVESmartpolis Insurance Turns Cars Into Curling Stones Across Russian Ice
Car Curling is a March 2017 experiential campaign created by Voskhod for Smartpolis Insurance in Russia, in which four teams pushed used Oka automobiles across ice in place of conventional curling stones, staging 50 planned vehicle collisions to demonstrate the brand's accident insurance proposition in a single, visceral public event.
Smartpolis Insurance and Voskhod staged the world's first car-curling competition on March 18, 2017, in Russia. The event replaced the granite stones of competitive curling with full-sized Oka city cars — a vehicle long embedded in everyday Russian life — and invited four teams of ten people each to compete across the ice. Participants drawn from four distinct groups took part: invited journalists, professional curlers, businesspeople, and existing Smartpolis clients. Each participant was individually insured for 500,000 rubles for the duration of the event, a detail that anchored the spectacle directly to the brand's core product. The campaign was produced on an approximate budget of 700,000 rubles, according to directnewideas.com, making its subsequent earned-media footprint all the more notable. Voskhod, the Yekaterinburg-based agency behind the concept, framed the controlled chaos of sliding, spinning, and colliding cars not as a danger but as a proof of concept — insurance exists precisely for moments like these. The Clapboard Score for Car Curling is 64 out of 100, reflecting strong creative distinctiveness offset by the campaign's inherently local scale. In the United States or Western European markets, a stunt of equivalent ambition would typically carry a significantly larger media budget; in Russia in 2017, the campaign's economy of means was itself part of the creative argument.
ARCHIVEThe Russian insurance market was growing steadily in 2017. Total written premiums in Russia reached ₽1,278.8 billion in 2017, up from ₽1,180.6 billion in 2016, representing 8.3% year-on-year growth, according to the Art Directors Club of Europe's market documentation cited in award submissions. Concentration among the largest players was also rising: the top ten insurers held 65.3% of the Russian market in 2017, and the top twenty held 79.8%, according to the same source. For a challenger brand like Smartpolis Insurance operating outside that dominant tier, conventional advertising faced an almost structural disadvantage — media budgets at the scale of Sberbank Life Insurance, identified as the leader of the Russian life insurance segment in 2017 by award-entry research, were simply not available.
Voskhod's strategic response was to abandon the insurance category's default register entirely. Most insurance advertising in Russia, as elsewhere, traffics in anxiety, responsibility, and the implied threat of misfortune. AlfaStrakhovanie, one of Russia's most prominent multi-line insurers and a direct competitor operating in overlapping product categories, pursued mainstream broadcast and digital channels consistent with its scale. Smartpolis had neither the budget nor the brand recognition to compete on those terms. The agency's insight was simpler and more physical: the most persuasive demonstration of what insurance covers is a controlled accident. Car Curling engineered exactly that — 50 planned vehicle collisions that transformed the abstract concept of coverage into something audiences could watch, photograph, and share. The mix of participants, combining credentialed journalists with professional curlers, business figures, and actual Smartpolis clients, ensured that the event spoke simultaneously to media amplification and existing customer relationships.
Car Curling used the Oka — a compact, rear-engine Soviet-era city car — as its central creative object. The choice was not arbitrary. The Oka carried strong cultural resonance in Russia as a vehicle associated with everyday, unglamorous motoring, making it a more legible and emotionally available prop than a prestige or foreign model would have been. Placing it on an ice sheet and sliding it toward a target at speed transformed a familiar object into something absurd, dangerous-looking, and immediately shareable. The event's visual grammar borrowed directly from competitive curling — a sport with genuine Russian cultural presence — and inverted it: where curling is precise and restrained, Car Curling was chaotic and loud.
The production assembled four teams of ten participants each, with the participant mix serving a dual creative function. Journalists provided natural distribution nodes for earned coverage. Professional curlers lent the event a degree of sporting legitimacy that prevented it from reading as pure stunt. Businesspeople and Smartpolis clients grounded it in the brand's actual commercial community. The 50 planned vehicle collisions were not incidental to the creative — they were the creative, each collision a live demonstration of the insurance thesis. Creative direction on the campaign is attributed to Andrey Gubaydullin and Vladislav Derevyannikh, with additional creative contributions from Anton Mamykin and Alexander Sinyuk, per Voskhod Agency. Production was overseen by Dmitry Donik, and account management was handled by Elizaveta Larionova, also per voskhod.agency. The event took place on March 18, 2017, with the agency portfolio date recorded as March 20, 2017, according to clapboard.com.
Car Curling generated a documented and externally verified performance record. The campaign earned a Bronze Lion in the Promo and Activation category at Cannes Lions 2017, according to the Cannes Lions awards archive. Golden Drum awarded the campaign two Grand Prix honours in 2017 — one in Financial and Business Services, and one in Brand, Product and Service Promotion Events — according to the Golden Drum organisation. The Art Directors Club of Europe recognised the work with a Gold Award in the Promotions and New Media, Events category in 2017, per the ADCE. These three award bodies represent the campaign's externally verifiable creative validation, and the combination of a Cannes Lions recognition alongside two Grand Prix wins at Golden Drum is an unusual achievement for a regional Russian campaign produced on approximately 700,000 rubles, according to directnewideas.com.
On earned media, the campaign reached 76 regional publications, 164 federal publications, and 34 international publications, according to clapboard.com. Social reach is reported at approximately 1.5 million, per clapboard.com. These figures reflect a meaningful amplification of the original event investment. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100 positions it as a creatively strong activation whose impact remained concentrated in Russia rather than generating the sustained global cultural conversation that would push scores higher. No independent third-party audience measurement or brand-lift data for the Car Curling campaign is publicly available beyond the earned media and social reach figures cited above.
Car Curling was a March 2017 experiential campaign in Russia created by Voskhod for Smartpolis Insurance. Four teams pushed used Oka cars across ice in place of curling stones, staging 50 planned vehicle collisions. Each participant was insured for 500,000 rubles, connecting the spectacle directly to the brand's insurance product.
Car Curling won a Bronze Lion in Promo and Activation at Cannes Lions 2017, according to the Cannes Lions archive. Golden Drum awarded the campaign two Grand Prix titles — in Financial and Business Services, and in Brand Promotion Events — in 2017, per the Golden Drum organisation. The Art Directors Club of Europe also awarded it a Gold in 2017.
Car Curling was created by Voskhod, the Yekaterinburg-based agency. Creative direction is attributed to Andrey Gubaydullin and Vladislav Derevyannikh, with creative contributions from Anton Mamykin and Alexander Sinyuk, per voskhod.agency. Production was led by Dmitry Donik and account management by Elizaveta Larionova, also per voskhod.agency.
The Car Curling campaign was produced on an approximate budget of 700,000 rubles, according to directnewideas.com. It generated coverage across 76 regional, 164 federal, and 34 international publications, per clapboard.com, and achieved approximately 1.5 million in social reach, also per clapboard.com, representing significant amplification relative to its production cost.
Voskhod selected the Oka because the compact Soviet-era city car carried strong everyday cultural resonance in Russia. Placing a familiar, unglamorous vehicle on an ice sheet and sliding it into others transformed a recognisable object into an immediately shareable spectacle, while the controlled collisions served as a live demonstration of Smartpolis Insurance's core accident-coverage proposition.
Car Curling by Smartpolis Insurance holds a Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's genuine creative distinctiveness — evidenced by its Cannes Lions Bronze and two Golden Drum Grand Prix awards — balanced against its primarily regional Russian footprint and the inherent scale limitations of a single live experiential event.
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