I attended the Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario’s (IBAO) convention almost three weeks ago and what an experience that was for me. It was my first time attending and it was an eye opener. There were many underwriters, marketers (from insurance and vendor companies), students and of course brokers there. As a former student, I think it is a great idea to invite students studying insurance to attend the convention and network with insurance and insurance related companies because upon graduation, some of these students might end up working for these companies.
What I enjoyed the most about the IBAO was the energy. Sure the morning I attended it wasn’t as busy, but as the day went on, the convention hall got very crowded. What I also noticed about the IBAO was that many brokers who visited our booth were younger than I imagined. I did meet some older brokers, but there was a lot of “fresh blood” at the convention. I always imagined that the insurance industry to consist of older individuals and a bit stuffy and I am happy to report, that is definitely not the case! I had so much fun meeting new people and many of them were very friendly and humorous.
Obviously events like these are an opportunity to network across the industry but at least from what I observed and talking to people, they enjoyed themselves. The IBAO convention offers industry professionals a chance to learn new information, get some free gifts, eat good food, but best of all, an excuse to leave the office. Let’s admit it; attending a convention is a lot more fun than sitting at the office!
Next event I’m attending is the TIWA meeting on November 17th! Are you attending? If you are, let me know.
I’ve blogged about how insurance companies could market their company to potential customers to create a pull demand from their brokers. Last week, I thought my eyes were deceiving me, but yesterday, I saw it again in a different city. I saw a billboard advertisement from Intact Insurance promoting their home insurance. Many of the insurance industry players know that Intact, formerly ING, changed their name and are rebranding their new name. It has been a while since Intact changed their name, but I find people still refer to Intact as ING. Could their marketing initiative be tied to the rebranding of their company name? Or are they doing it to be industry first?
Recently I’ve noticed advertisements from insurance companies but generally it is from insurance companies that have agents who write their own policies. It makes sense, as those who utilize a broker want their brokers to find them the best quote. Marketing might be lost on these people, but I think as consumers, we can still create a pull demand. Lately though, I’m finding more insurance companies are advertising their company name and services.
This is the first time I saw Intact advertising. I wish I could find the picture of the billboard on the Internet or their website, but alas no luck yet. Intact must be serious or at least have a purpose to why they chose billboards to advertise. Not sure why a billboard – that and if you are going to spend a lot of money on renting out a billboard, you would think they would have some information and a number on it. Oh well, I find it catchy, but I am curious why a billboard and for what purpose. Question…has anyone seen this billboard or any other form of advertisement by Intact Insurance…and where did you see it? Heck, I’ll offer a reward for anyone who submits the best picture of Intact’s billboard advertisement. I am fascinated that finally insurance companies are advertising more aggressively. Or maybe they’ve had, but I never noticed it.
Another advertisement I’ve seen was by State Farm for car insurance for young drivers. I think it is smart as they chose a Disney Star geared toward the same demographic as what State Farm is hoping to reach. This celebrity has a clean image and advocates safe driving techniques and how State Farm is her choice of insurance as they make sure she is taken care of. State Farm’s marketing has been smart. All marketing initiative has synergy – from their market positioning to their marketing channels, everything ties together.
As promised above, I am putting out a contest. Here are the basic rules:
Submit a photo of Intact Insurance’s billboard advertisement, and indicate where you saw it
Include your name, company name, address and e-mail address
Submission due date is November 6, 2009 at 11:59 pm
E-mail the photo to syoo@servicemasterofyr.com
One winner with the best picture will receive a gift certificate to Home Depot. Good luck!
My friend who works at Telus at the retail level found out in November they will be releasing the iPhone, which is the first for the phone to be released to a CDMA company. My friend, the paragon of all employees, decided to post the Telus link about the upcoming release on Facebook.
As any curious person…well okay, so I admit, I love their advertisements, especially when they bring out the cute animals, clicked on the link that my friend posted. Once the page loaded I was shocked. When I saw the registration form, my mind boggled and once that cleared, was very impressed. I’ll get to it later on why I am so impressed.
To kick off the interest, you can go to the Telus site and register and they will keep you posted with news on the launch and information about their prices and plans.
What I love about this is that it is probably one of the smartest marketing initiatives on Telus’ part. Why? As part of my program at Seneca College, I had to take a direct marketing course, and my teacher is probably one of the most brilliant marketers of all time. There are so many different forms of marketing and some that are very costly and elaborate, but he taught me to keep it simple. Sometimes the best marketing strategy is something so obvious and simple to execute. As I mentioned before, the best marketing is when you understand your customers or your ideal potential customers, and their behavior. This new marketing initiative from Telus was an unexpected pleasant surprise for me, as they never done this before.
The registration form is collecting information from non-Telus customers and creating their own in-house data base. When a company wants to rent database it cost money…do it yourself, it is essentially free. Database (of segmented groups of people with certain characteristics) is helpful to find prospective customers and better understand their behavior so that one can customize the right marketing mix to cater to that segment. Telus collecting prospective customers’ information through their registration form instead of renting lists is brilliant! On top of that, those who submit a form are already interested so sending information out to them won’t feel like spam and their conversion ratio will probably be high compared to traditional direct marketing campaign (direct mailing program, a 3% response rate is considered successful).
What would be nice to see on these forms would be trying to find out the behavior of those potential customers who would be interested in the iPhone; and things like what is the average price they spend on a monthly cell phone plan, what phone they currently use, their needs and wants with a phone plan, etc. Then their in-house data base would be more comprehensive and then Telus can adjust their iPhone prices and plans to cater to a specific group of target market that would maximize the company’s bottom line.
I know insurance industry uses direct marketing. I have witnessed it myself with a brokerage firm when they rented out a list with specific demographic to launch their new program. They literally sent out thousands of mail-outs to reach the target market, while Telus is luring customers in. If the incentive is sweet enough, I could see insurance companies or brokers and agents adapting what Telus is doing and growing their own in-house data base for future marketing campaigns.
Money makes the world go ‘round, but free makes everyone happy.
For those who do follow my blog, I mentioned that I am attending Ryerson University part-time to obtain my Bachelor of Commerce, Marketing Management degree. I am taking one course a semester and this semester I am taking Marketing Matrix and Strategy. In week two of my class, our course outline required us to read several articles on this new marketing phenomenon called ‘freeconomics’ and ‘freemium’ and the concept of charging customers NOTHING. The article says that charging nothing to customers will be the future of business.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could ‘buy’ things for free? Well you can…sort of. Let me explain a little bit more. This kind of economy where consumers are getting things for free is being coined as freeconomics. Freeconomics is originally driven by the technologies related to the power of the Web. Technology is practically free like e-mail is with Gmail or Yahoo, or bandwidth for Youtube and Google.
Derived from freeconomics there is another model called freemium. What is freemium? In layman terms, it means offering services for ‘free’ for the mass and charging a premium for others or from advertisement. What that does is help the public access a product or service for free.
For example, Flickr has two different versions: one is free and the other is premium. The premium version which requires you to pay a fee offers more features than the free version. How Flickr makes their money is off the 1 Percent Rule business model. How this model works is that 1 percent of the users (premium Flicker) support all the rest of the users who do not purchase the premium.
Google is partly a search engine where users can use for free. Google makes their money off the pay-per-click or sponsored link ads. This helps subsidize their business so that they can offer their services to consumers for free (aka email and search engine usage).
Then there is the business model which follows the cross-subsidies. It is free to anyone willing to pay eventually one way or another. There are two examples: razors and gaming consoles. Any company that sells razors sell the unit at a very low cost and then sell the blades at an exorbitant prices (blades account for 70-80% of their revenue). Second generation Wii was free if customers purchased the deluxe version of Rock Band. Games for gaming consoles are not cheap and this is how companies make money is through the cross-subsidies.
Freeconomics is slowly rolling over to products and services other than online. Of course there is a price to pay. Look at cell phones in Canada. You can get a free phone if you sign up with a provider with a three-year contract. You can even get minutes very cheap but where they make money is off of packages like voicemail which becomes pure profit. Selling minutes to customers costs providers next to nothing. More bands are now releasing their albums for free on their website, but when their concert comes around, the paraphernalia and concert tickets are where the band makes money.
Most of the examples above are technology and web-based but what’s to say we as consumers couldn’t get tangible products or services for free in the future?
Freeconomics is still a viable business model. Could this be translated to the insurance industry? Insurance companies need three basic requirements in order to remain viable, this is courtesy of Superpages, but one basic requirement is very similar to the freemium model: an insurance company needs a large pool of insureds in a diverse demographic (age, gender, occupation, history etc).
For freemium to work, you need two different types of customers – those who are willing to buy into your product or services free of charge, and the small percentage of customers who are willing to pay premium. A company can make money by selling advertising space or follow the cross-subsidies model so that they can offer their product or services free of charge. We could already say that the insurance industry follows the freemium model through their insurance deductible. There are some who are willing to pay lower premium therefore their deductible being higher, and those who are willing to pay more premium and pay less deductible in case of an emergency. You hope that those who pay the higher premium covers the cost of future pay outs and still remain a profitable company.
So why is the concept of freeconomics and freemium such a new marketing strategy? Insurance companies modified the freemium model slightly in regards with their insurance deductible, but could the industry offer ‘free’ insurance in the future and follow either the cross-subsidies or the 1 Percent Rule?
Either way, wouldn’t it be interesting to see if the insurance industry could model their business structure on the freeconomics?
Is there a company we can label as “perfect”? It doesn’t matter if it is a big corporation or small mom and pop shop. No one is ever perfect. But hey, that’s life. This past summer we have had many property claims due to disaster that damaged either people’s basements or roofs. That means when an insured needs help with the aftermath of the disaster, a preferred vendor gets called by the insurance company to go and either do emergency cleanup and or reconstruction to the home to its pre-loss condition (if need be).
There are several contractors in Canada and everyone operates slightly differently and has different personalities. This is not to say one method is better than the other. Even the most reputable company can have glowing reviews from millions of clients but in their dark closet they probably have few skeletons (aka bad reviews). The worst part is, you can have people who love your company and are extremely satisfied with your products and services but one bad review can hurt a company easily in matter of seconds.
In the insurance industry, contractors are at the bottom of the totem pole. Contractors (especially those who deal only through insurance claims) get fed only if it is handed to them. It also doesn’t help that the industry is a highly competitive one. There are so many restoration firms in Canada and more competitors in the industry means more you have to fight for the market share. But that also means the more market share you gain in order to grow your business, less market share the other firms in the industry will have. That means other firms do not like you if you grow, because it means they see less revenue.
If a company can gain a competitive advantage, they should take it. When companies, all things equal, are competing for business, in my opinion, comes down to this: customer service. Customer service can make or break a company, as quality of service indicates to clients what type of company you are.
Have you ever had to deal with a restoration firm and what was your experience like? In your experience what are the most common problems with contractors? It would be interesting to see we could do to improve our business and learn from other’s mistakes.
“The principle is competing against yourself. It’s about self improvement, about being better than you were the day before.” – Steve Young
My condolences to home owners in Woodbridge and Maple who experienced disaster to their homes, resulting families to move out temporarily until repairs are completed. On August 20th 2009, a tornado hit and hundreds of homes were affected. Many people witnessed their roofs being blown off and front of their homes completely destroyed.
Photograph above is courtesty of CBC.ca
Those with structural damage and depending on the extent of the damage, repairing homes can take at least 6-12 months. Families who were forced out of their homes will be renting a place or moving in with friends or family members – which isn’t the most convenient or comfortable living situation for long term.
It seems that this summer we have had a lot of disaster to people’s homes. All over Ontario, there have been thousands of homes which have been affected by natural disaster. We have seen many roofs or water claims this summer but the first major catastrophe we witnessed this summer was in Hamilton, Ottawa and soon after Woodbridge and Maple area.
This disaster taught me to be prepared for the worst: don’t leave valuables in the basement. If you get water in your house, the first place it is affected is the basement. Have an emergency kit handy that includes first aid, flashlights with extra batteries and important phone numbers (like one close reliable friend, one other family member, and your broker or agent). Also talk to your family about a safe meeting point. If you have to evacuate, you want to make sure that your family meets at one agreed area to reconnect. In addition, make sure you have at least one landline phone in case there is a prolonged blackout. Cordless may be convenient but if there is a blackout, a cordless phone will not work as it relies on electricity to power them. Making sure you are prepared allows you to be ready in case there is an emergency.
What happened to the families who had to be evacuated from their homes is unfortunate; however, once you and your family are safe it is now a time game. It takes time to repair your home to the pre-loss condition and it is best to be patient as you can. The Woodbridge and Maple tornado hit hundreds of homes and there are only so many reputable restoration firms in Ontario. You can find list of resources from the OIAA (Ontario Insurance Adjusters Association) website. Just a warning, most of these firms only deal with insurance related claims and therefore if you want to restore your home on your own accord you may not be able to.
Regardless, please be prepared for the worst and make sure you and your family are taken care of in case disaster hits your home. What takes a long time to build could be destroyed in matter of minutes. On a better note, weather seems to be better lately, so I hope you all enjoy the rest of the summer.
Everyday more and more people are signing up on Twitter, either for personal use or for business. Twitter gets a lot of media attention because celebrities tweet their lives on it and it gives the public an insight to their favourite celebrity. Some celebrities even tweet their PR message to combat rumors tabloids report about.
Is Twitter more an American thing? Because studies show only 26% of online Canadians are aware of Twitter and only 1.45% use it. Out of the 33 million people in Canada, more than 22 million people access the Internet regularly. That means just over 300,000 Canadians are using Twitter. That doesn’t seem like a lot since 85% of online Canadians are on Facebook, which translates to 18.7 million Canadians.
I started a blog ‘Laugh & Plaster’ and a Twitter account on behalf of the company. All contents on the blog are related back into the insurance industry and trying to keep all the followers and those whom I follow on Twitter to be either Marketing or Insurance representative. Ideally, I would love to only have Insurance representatives in Ontario but the chances of it in the next couple years are slim as there are only so many users.
Major companies like Starbucks and Zappos are on Twitter tweeting either sales promotions or random quotes. They got huge followers, so why do people follow them? Are they more interesting than the other tweeters? By the above examples (Starbucks and Zappos), are B2C companies on Twitter more successful, in terms of followers, than those who target B2B because there are more people in that target audience available in the Twitter world?
Those who are active on Twitter tweets at least once a day (or at least try to) but I wonder if people care, especially if you are a company representative tweeting. Sure some may respond to your tweets but why isn’t Twitter as popular as Facebook?
On top of that, whoever is tweeting on behalf of the company gets paid to do it. A company is justifying an employee’s time tweeting. Do companies find benefits from Twitter? Or is Twitter a medium that you cannot correlate directly with your company’s profit margin? I’m speaking more specifically companies that Tweet and are primarily in the B2B channel.
Do you find Twitter beneficial? I have read blogs from professionals who swear by Twitter and are primarily using it as a maintenance program. Is Twitter a numbers game, in regards to followers, that indicates you are successful? I mean, you can have millions of followers but no one responding or reading, or you could have 10 followers whom you never met, but every follower interacting with you through Twitter. So how are companies justifying Twitter? As a company, all marketing initiatives has to have an objective and a form of ROI. On Twitter what measures success?
I’ve been thinking about viral marketing a lot these days. I have blogged numerously about branding strategies and integrated marketing communications in the past, but I never mentioned viral marketing, which has been readily utilized in the last couple years by different companies in different industries.
Then I started to think could insurance companies create viral marketing to promote their services and products? I always wondered how insurance companies got so big and yet we really do not see much advertising from them. Is it because they get their businesses from brokers and agents?
Are insurance companies who have marketing divisions just attending industry related conferences or events or is there more to it than meets the eye?
What is viral marketing? In layman terms, viral marketing is techniques used to get brand awareness out or to achieve marketing objectives. But it isn’t easy as pressing the Staples’ easy button. Viral marketing means you have to create the piece and release it and then the public spreads the word for you. Technology has become a big tool in our personal and professional world, and Internet has become a major driving force for viral marketing because it reaches so many people instantly.
The hard thing about viral marketing is that it cannot be easily controlled. Once out in the public, it can be skewed or misperceived, but if it does skew favourably, it can be highly successful venture. Viral marketing and the tools to create it comes in several different forms, but I will post some videos which has garnered attention and spread amongst the Internet world.
The multi-character Kelly has several videos featuring songs like, Let Me Borrow That Top, Muffin and Shoes – all which are immensely popular with millions of hits (Shoes hit at almost 29 millions hits).
My New Haircut has different editions (original is the Italian gentleman) but the spin off, My New Haircut Asian Edition became a bigger hit with people replicating the video and posting it on Youtube.
Fred is one of the top ten words searched on Google and is number 2 most subscribed on Youtube. This is a boy who posts videos with a chipmunk voice and has gotten so popular he got to host mini segments throughout the Teen Choice awards. He is even selling ‘Fred’ t-shirts through his website.
Then you got celebrity blogger like Perez Hilton who has millions of hits per day and makes a living as a full time blogger and making “celebrity” appearances. This all came about through his website where he makes fun of celebrities.
TV shows are using Twitter to create buzz. For example, ABC Family, Make It or Break It offers characters who tweet little spoilers for the upcoming episodes and insight on the character’s thoughts. Glee which garnered a lot of attention by releasing the pilot for free beginning of the summer through their website got people anticipating for the season four months ahead of time. They twitter links of behind the scenes of episodes that aired to maintain their buzz.
Like I mentioned before, viral marketing cannot be easily controlled and sometimes it can work against you. Couple months back a singer had a bad experience with an airline and created a music video about them and it hit the Internet world like wildfire. They have over 5 million hits! This type of viral marketing was a good thing for the singer – his objective was to get the world to know how bad that particular airline was and to promote his music, and for the airline, it was obviously bad PR. Take a look at the video below:
On a less depressing note, Dove’s commercials highlighting real women hit a spot in the everyday woman. In conjunction with their website, print advertisements and commercials, their key brand and message was spread quickly and their shares in beauty products soared.
Dove was solely known as the gentle soap, and often mistaken with Ivory which is Proctor and Gamble, and Dove being Unilever. Their viral marketing consists of having women all over the world share their thoughts on what they liked about their bodies. Dove’s key message is still “…to embrace all definition of beauty.” This campaign helped Dove differentiate themselves to Ivory, their main competitor.
Viral marketing, if done correctly, can be a huge success for a company. It allows the message to spread fast and wide and often times, it can be relatively budget friendly for those with a smaller marketing budget. Insurance companies could potentially implement viral marketing to get new clients. Sure insurance companies get clients through brokers, but clients could create a push demand and request a specific insurance company. I wonder what the outcome would look like.
No work is ever just 9-5 pm. Sure, they will be times when you are in the office from 9-5 pm day in and day out. For some employees in certain industries, it could mean you have to put in your standard 9-5 and then go to an event on behalf of your company, which ends at 1 am. This kind of lifestyle may not suit parents with young children or for those who have night school because of time conflict. These are the times (and when I was in school) I wish a day consist of 48 hours, and that way I could do a lot more things in a day.
I mentioned before that I studied Business Administration Marketing – which is essentially a business program with an emphasis in marketing. I come to find with my first job as a marketing/communications assistant, is that I mainly either do graphic (not my specialty) or network with the people in the industry – of which neither are what I studied in school.
This job requires me to be in the office a lot, but at times out on the field doing Broker or Agent visits or attending functions. I have a little conundrum. I have decided to continue with my education and take only one course a semester and take my time finishing up my degree. I have told the managers my plans when I interviewed with them and again after I registered for a class (4 month period since I reminded them my intentions). If I could do two courses a semester, that would be better, but with my unpredictable schedule, I cannot commit to schooling and attending classes consistently for that reason. Sure I can take online, but I prefer to be in class and have the ability to interact with other students and my professor. I find that I learn so much better this way and online courses, I seem to struggle more because of the lack of interaction.
After I notified the managers that I will be taking one course a semester, they were okay with it. Here is the problem – an event popped up, and I know I should go as it is an opportunity for me to network on behalf of the company, but it happens to be across town and during my class time. Work is important but so is my schooling.
Have you come across this conundrum and what did you do?
I played golf for the first time in my life. When I went for my interview for this position, one of their questions was: “Do you play golf?” I always knew in business, golf was a major activity, and I always planned on learning. While in school, I had two part-time jobs, trained for the Ontario College Marketing Competition and had two roles in my student government as President of my campus, and Vice-Chair/Treasurer of all for campuses at Seneca College. Once I finished school, I had a full-time job right away and still kept my part-time job at Shoppers on the weekends, and I just never seemed to find the time to learn. The summer is already ending and golf season will too. I said, enough is enough, I have to focus on my career and golf is part of my networking opportunity for my career. So I finally quit Shoppers and got some rest (which was in dire need) and went to the range for the first time this past weekend.
Golf is an expensive sport. You have to have the clubs, the shoes, the glove and the right attire. Then let us not forget the green fees, cart fees and food for the day. If you never played golf before, you have to pay for basic lessons on how to get your swing correctly and which club works best when.
Right now, financially, I am a little tight. I have to pay for my cell phone and car insurance bill each month, gas is a major part of my expense (I drive about almost 100 km a day to get to work and back home), and I just bought a new laptop. On top of that, I paid for my class I will be taking next week at Ryerson and I have to account for books, a clicker and travel expense. Due to some high expenses this month, I cannot even invest money – which I have been doing consistently since I was 13. I decided to go to the range and borrow my parent’s clubs and ask my father to teach me the basic skills. I think I got the swing somewhat down, I just have to remember to avoid on scooping the ball with the club, and get consistency in my swings. My father and I walked down the range, and saw a gentleman getting lessons, and we watched afar for a bit, and everything the man was being taught, my dad had already showed me. My father still recommended me to take one lesson later on, but get the basic down with him for now.
I can see why people love golf. It is quite fun, and yes I am only at the range, but seeing how far I can swing the ball is exciting. I’m quite competitive and motivated to be the best that I can be. I have a type A personality, and I hate to be the worst in anything. Just to share with you, I hit 75 yards few times, and once, 100 yards. Sure I had a lot of duds, but why mention that? :p
Once I can hit 100 yards consistently, I will go and try out the 9 holes and practice and that way by next year, I can go golfing with clients for work. What I wonder is why golf so popular, especially in the business world and in the insurance world? Sure it is fun, but is it because while you play you can still chat? Or is it because it is known as the rich man’s sport?
In the insurance industry, contractors are at the bottom of the totem pole. Contractors (especially those who deal only through insurance claims) get fed only if it is handed to them. It also doesn’t help that the industry is a highly competitive one. There are so many restoration firms in Canada and more competitors in the industry means more you have to fight for the market share. But that also means the more market share you gain in order to grow your business, less market share the other firms in the industry will have. That means other firms do not like you if you grow, because it means they see less revenue.
Photograph above is courtesty of CBC.ca
I played golf for the first time in my life. When I went for my interview for this position, one of their questions was: “Do you play golf?” I always knew in business, golf was a major activity, and I always planned on learning. While in school, I had two part-time jobs, trained for the Ontario College Marketing Competition and had two roles in my student government as President of my campus, and Vice-Chair/Treasurer of all for campuses at Seneca College. Once I finished school, I had a full-time job right away and still kept my part-time job at Shoppers on the weekends, and I just never seemed to find the time to learn. The summer is already ending and golf season will too. I said, enough is enough, I have to focus on my career and golf is part of my networking opportunity for my career. So I finally quit Shoppers and got some rest (which was in dire need) and went to the range for the first time this past weekend.