Claiming ‘Cool’

At the Insurance Brokers Association of B.C. (IBABC) conference in Victoria on June 17, brokers and insurers alike were introduced to Jeremy Gutsche, a speaker MTV describes as “at the forefront of cool.”

Now what would a guy ‘at the forefront of cool’ have to say to Canada’s property and casualty insurance industry? After all, the media rarely portray this industry as ‘cool’ at the best of times (cold-blooded, maybe, but definitely not ‘cool.’)

Gutsche was dispensing advice on ‘Exploiting Chaos: Sparking Innovation During Times of Change,’ which just so happens to be the title of his new book. Among his tips, he advised insurers and brokers to “be obsessed about knowing your current (and prospective) customers.” This means everyone in the organization — especially chief executive officers — should be observing and talking to customers, Gutsche said.

Thanks to the vast reach of electronic and social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, “when you create something that connects [to the consumer]…your story will travel faster than ever before,” Gutsche observed.

To illustrate, he referenced a cutting-edge advertising campaign, ‘Don’t Mess With Texas,’ that successfully reduced littering in the state. The slogan came from researching the kind of people who littered. The litterers were found to be predominantly young men aged 18-30 who threw beer cans out of their pick-up trucks and lived a ‘king-of-my-world’ lifestyle.

How to reach these people? One campaign ad featured a truck with such guys stopping to talk to a famous football player. One tosses a beer can out of the truck. The football player growls at them, saying ‘You mess with Texas, you’re messing with me,’ in exactly the kind of menacing fashion one would imagine the litterers to act. The ad campaign contributed to reducing litter by 72% over four years.

The point? If you know your audience and can connect with them using a simple, direct and supercharged message, you can get your story across.

Gutsche asked insurers at the conference to come up with their own “supercharged” slogans that would sum up in seven words or less what the industry does for consumers. “Life’s Condom,” one group came up with. “Cover Your Ass,” was another. “I can see your compliance people are going to love you,” Gutsche joked.

But maybe therein lies the problem. It isn’t necessarily that the insurance industry isn’t cool. It’s that a host of lawyers and compliance people aren’t letting it be cool, since being cool is often associated with not doing things exactly by the book.

The industry is going to have to crack this nut soon, though, because to reach the Internet generation, the industry may just have to play with the “shock value” fire. This industry needs to reach youth not only to sell them insurance, but to draw from their ranks to fill up open staff positions.

The chartered accountants have launched an aggressive ad campaign to promote their industry, doing their best to get beyond the stereotypes of dull people in suits doing boring number-crunching behind a desk. (They are portrayed as ‘team players,’ for example, the guys in suits who can turn a double play.)

The property and casualty insurance industry can be even more dramatic, when you think about what the industry does for a living. One can envision a TV ad showing chaos, fires and destruction everywhere, with a family of four in tears and crying, holding the shards of personal effects. The camera winds the earthquake devastation backwards, so that the building is placed back together, the family’s injuries disappear and the family is happily discussing their day in their home’s kitchen, just prior to the earthquake occurring. One can envision the slogan “Normal Never Felt So Good” appearing on screen.

This is just one of a zillion examples the brains in our industry can come up with to pitch the value of the industry to consumers. It’s time to get these creative ideas flowing. It’s time to start framing the way people identify the industry, instead of having the industry image shaped by other people as dull, boring and decidedly uncool.