Profile Customers Above-The-Line

Come fly save with me

Oi! Come here. Save 20% with us. Get £250 off with us. Join us today and get £100 cheaper insurance. Save £250 off what? £100 cheaper than what? Save 20% from what price? Grrrrrr!

The insurance advertising game has stuck to the same old messages for so long. A lack of creativity? Lack of intelligence? Fear of doing something different? It is only recently that we’ve started to see a tiny bit of common sense creep into the above-the-line insurance advertising of the UK’s major brands – having already squandered millions of pounds over the last decade or so. Some are still at it.

For too long we’ve lived in the world of caveats with false and meaningless promises. The neanderthals’ method of insurance advertising is to appeal to the primary motive of the customer and scream the solution at the top of their voice. But what if that isn’t the product you deliver? What if you cannot fulfill that promise? What if that promise doesn’t fit the way your brand is aligned? More importantly, what if that is not best for the customer because they haven’t managed to grasp the concept that insurance is not an off-the-shelf product? Doh!

The way insurance advertising was done

It seems as though the historic way of thinking about insurance advertising is to use it as a tool with which to grab as many leads as possible. Of course, budgets dictate the limits but the marketing managers of yester-year must have been judged on the number of leads they generated rather than the return on investment from their advertising pound.

Today’s insurance advertising is shifting – slightly. We’re still working in a price driven market and we’re still communicating to millions of customers who have negative apathy™ towards the products we sell. They hate buying it but they legally have to in most cases. However, the shift we can see is the point in the process at which customers are being profiled.

Historically, you’d spend your insurance advertising pound knowing that you were trying to talk to a small percentage of the population. Your scope depended on the underwritting rules of your company and the need to build a certain book of business. However, the profiling of customers only happened when the customer came into secondary contact with the brand. Primary contact was made through your advertising and exposure. Secondary contact came after the customer’s reaction to this when they got online or picked up the phone.

Nowadays, we’re seeing the profiling take place in above-the-line insurance advertising itself. Churchill’s latest campaign – Challenge Churchill requests that customers with a three year no claims bonus get in touch. Ok, they’re still shouting about beating quotes and prices but at least they’re starting the profiling to some degree. A step further on, we’ve got Direct Line who (probably because of their brand strength) make no mention of prices, premiums or quotes in their advertising. Instead, they talk about their way of doing business. Ok, so they can’t really say they’re cheaper than anyone for any particular profile but they’re talking to customers about important issues to them which are often neglected by 95% of the market – no doubt some consumer research has paid off here.

Messages with no meaning

So, which neanderthols are still out there banging the cheap drum, making all the noise and confusion in the market? This is the point in my post where you’d expect the worst performers to appear. Unfortunately, the list of offenders would read like the morning regsitration session at an over-crowded state school.

Ok, so we know that the Admiral Group’s in-house team doesn’t produce the best creative – one can only assume they’ve gone on the assumption that when the ad looks cheap, neanderthol customer thinks the product is cheap. That aside, we can see that their Bell brand pushes the zero no claims profile up front, the Diamond brand obviously presents itself to women. But what about the cheap brand? Can’t they do anything about that one? Push the online element. Push the younger market which your underwritting seems to suit. Push anything except that bloody elephant in my face. It has no meaning. It only aids a negative recall of annoyance.

Wouldn’t you want a piece of the action

It poses an interesting question though…how far forward can you profile customers with insurance advertising? Judging by the online quotation form performance (Endsleigh for example) of many of the leading brands, it seems as though they could do with some respite. I don’t know of any call centre (UK or foreign based) which manages to deal with customers quick enough – it will never happen.

What if you could give your online and call centre quotation resource a chance to perform better (shocking thought I know), maintain a similar absolute level of sales (or find it increase as you develop a profile reputation) and dedicate more resources to dealing with customers. The outcome would be a better return on investment of the millions of insurance advertising pounds spent each year, higher conversion rates of enquiries to sales and you may even find that you’ve stumbled upon an improved reputation (for the risk profile and your overall customer service). Wouldn’t you want a piece of the action?

Plenty of holes to explore in my reasoning but still…your thoughts ladies and gentlemen…how much could you realistically profile customers in your above-the-line insurance advertising? The market has delved as far as no claims bonus, gender and sometimes age profiles. What about regional advertising? Is anyone targetting that way – cutting out Merseyside?!!