Are insurance sellers failing in building trust with their customers?

In a recent survey of 400 nationally represented insurance buyers, a clear message has been given that despite all the advertising and hype, there remains a serious lack of trust in insurance providers.

• Just under 73% believe that insurance providers make the terms and conditions in their policies deliberately complicated.
• Half believe claims are never paid out fairly.
• A third believe that insurance providers expect them to lie about a claim.

The survey was originally carried out on behalf of the CII, commissioned Lamb Creative Marketing & Consultancy Limited in partnership with research specialists, Illuminas. It attempts to understand the buying motivations of insurance buyers and overlay them alongside the perceptions they have of the industry.

Mark Huxley, Director of Lamb, himself a veteran of the insurance industry said "The results of this survey may seem shocking, but in reality, should we be surprised? Probably not, buying insurance is for many, perceived as a distressed purchase."

What is perhaps sad is that at a time when there has never been more insurance advertising, much of it drives price first and foremost, with features and sometimes service then coming in a distant second. Looking at the survey it cannot be disputed that price is a real determinant of converting an insurance sale, with 72% of the respondents attesting to this fact.

However we need to look a bit more deeply. We questioned further about what factors are the most important when taking out or renewing a policy, their replies were clear and unambiguous. 89% stated that they look to their provider to be trustworthy and 79% said that it is important for insurance advisors to have professional qualifications related to insurance.

This whole survey has thrown up some interesting matters to debate here at Lamb. Hundreds of millions of pounds are being spent by the industry on advertising their products. Apart from the choice of celebrity endorsement or comedy character it is hard to differentiate one from another. Do these adverts work? To themselves, undoubtedly they raise brand awareness, in some cases to unprecedented levels. But when aligned to the brand experience that an insurer actually wants to portray, I fear they do not. Clearly the buyers out there are looking for someone to trust and that message is just not getting through. Dare we say that perhaps it is time for the focus to shift.

How not to be brand bland

In times of strong competition, brand matters more than ever. Mark Huxley offers his guidance in a feature article from LittleJohn's newsletter.

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These uncertain financial times particularly resonate for the insurance industry, which apart from managing its own business, can have a significant influence on those of its clients. It is a time, therefore, that industry practitioners need to showcase their talents, attracting and keeping valuable clients. Simply put, it is a time for your brand to shine through and work positively for you.

So what is a brand?

Your brand is your business. It is the embodiment of who you are, what you do and what makes you the broker of choice. It must be clearly understood and recognised by your customers. After all, it is their opinion that governs your success.

Take coffee shops – Starbucks, Costa or Caffè Nero. Which do you and your colleagues frequent and why? Compare answers and I bet you’ll defend why yours is the right choice and not theirs. The coffee shops have created their identity and we are disciples of it. This example will equally apply to those that choose to work with you.

So what makes a brand good? There are four elements that must function in unison.

• Authentic – is your brand fundamentally true to itself? It had a vision from the start, has it stayed true to it? It must never pretend to be something it is not.
• Compelling – does it engage people emotionally, creating an immediate affinity? It’s this above all else that drives brand selection.
• Distinctive – it’s innovators not imitators that really stand out from the rest. That point of difference makes you individual; convey it from the very core of your business.
• Excellent – brand leaders truly deliver; they do what they say and do it well. Make false promises or fail to live up to expectations and you will quickly kill your reputation!

“Your brand is your business. It is the embodiment of who you are, what you do and what makes you the broker of choice”

As marketers, how do we understand and deliver strong brands?

Investigation, analysis & strategy

We ask the key stakeholders in the business to share their beliefs and ambitions. We learn their common values and, just as important, where they differ. This insight allows us to distil these values into words, adjectives and phrases that get to the very heart of the business.

Building the brand

With the words from stage one we have all the tools necessary to undertake any brand creation or re-engineering. We showcase the brand in action across the range of media; stationery, brochures, online, presentational, promotional, advertising, and so on.

Introduction & launch

The newly-created brand needs to be delivered internally before being used anywhere externally. It should be properly documented and presented to everybody. Fail to do this and all the hard work will be undone with a brand that is poorly understood, poorly executed, diluted and likely to fail. Not to mention losing all those potential Brand Champions you employ who can be your greatest sales force.

Implementation

Now is the time to identify the marketing disciplines that best promote your brand. Print, online, communications, PR, advertising and events are just some of the methods. Every execution needs to be carefully thought out, not just for its own merits but also as part of the wider campaign. A specific date or future event can help build momentum, as well as keeping focus on the whole campaign.

Insurance is an industry where adjectives like trust, reliability and professionalism ring through. With its complex distribution channels and networks, word-of-mouth is still fiercely active. Reputations can be made or broken quickly. In these challenging times, it is therefore vital to actively manage your brand in all its parts. Do it well and you will instinctively gain clients, make a powerful impression on them, and build loyalty, based upon your reputation to deliver.

Lamb Cited by Design Week as an agency that really understands its clients' businesses

Creatives deserve a much bigger say in the boardroom, but David Bernstein thinks making them directors might debase their most useful quality - detachment

Creativity should have a bigger say in the boardroom, argues Guy Lane (DW 5 November), while advising creatives, ‘Relax, you won’t get on the board’. Alas, my experience endorses this view. Creative influence at the top requires a sympathetic advocate, preferably someone with a reputation within the company - not for creativity, but for business acumen.

But do companies really want creative input? Creativity is dangerous. It presages change. An idea is criticism. It questions the status quo, thedefence of which is the main preoccupation of those board members Lane describes as ‘providing stewardship rather than innovation’, like generals fighting battles from previous wars, to whom creative people are loose cannons.

Hence, most company directors are ambivalent, regarding creativity at best as a necessary evil. Creatives may be far-sighted and, by initiating change, able to give the company a role in the future, but, muses the corporate mind, how do we control this catalyst? How could the board accommodate such a renegade spirit, other than as a court jester, a licensed fool? Creatives today must be able to understand business and be adept in it. Their task is not to solve creative problems but to solve business problems creatively. It is precisely this skill that is missing from the average boardroom.

Never mind, says the corporation, we can always hire it in. And if the new business activity reported in these pages is any guide (DW 26 November), companies are not put out by the word ‘creative’. Four of the successful groups had something in common: The Market Creative, Origin Creative, Lamb Creative Marketing and Sperm Creative.

The real test of a company’s attitude to creativity is the way a consultancy is treated - as supplier or partner and, if the latter, as junior or equal. Some industry luminaries have broken the mould by becoming simultaneously non-executive directors of their clients, such as Richard Seymour of Seymour Powell and John McConnell when a partner at Pentagram. Alan Fletcher, of course, was almost always treated as an equal, but then he paid his clients the identical compliment.

Having someone of the calibre of a Fletcher on hand at key times in a company’s development can be truly beneficial. Lane bemoans the fact creative consultants are often ‘brought in after the fact to make sense of a merger.

Too bad that they’re not [there] when the deals are planned’. I was lucky enough to be part of a creative team called in at the planning stage of recent merger. We could act as independent catalysts, extracting by means of phrase-completion and picturecaptioning exercises what eachcomponent thought of the other and how the merged company might look in five years’ time. It goes without saying that we had to earn therespect and therefore the cooperation of the participants.

Our detachment from both parties gave credence to our actions and encouraged frankness. The value of the venture would have been less had we performed as board members of one of the partners. So I, too, am ambivalent regarding the interface of corporation and creativity, endorsing the company’s need to recognise creativity’s role within the organisation while denying it direct representation at the top table, but hoping that seated there is a sympathetic advocate.

Written by David Bernstein and first published in Design Week Magazine 28th January 2010