There's never been more data. Or more people with 'insight' in their job title. Or more suppliers with data and insight solutions. And yet there seems to be fewer insights. As a CMO, insights make the difference between marketing that moves people and marketing that is invisible. Brent will give his unique perspective on what makes a great insight, from his current role as a CMO and his previous life in some of the world's best creative agencies. He will also share how insights have helped him manage a major insurance brand through the challenges of COVID-19 to emerge even stronger.
This paper argues that, in spite of consistent levels of promotional support for UK insurance companies since they first began advertising on television in the mid-1970s, no strong insurance company brands have yet been established in the UK in 20 years. It recognises that there have been many FALSE starts, and looks at the influences from inside and outside the companies which have aided and abetted this failure in branding. It considers the attitudes of company managers towards branding, and examines why the distribution system for insurance products has not seemed to need, or be able to use, strong brands. It examines how the recent changes in regulation and legislation have now made branding of insurance a much more important issue, and lays out some suggested courses of action to remedy this lack of brand building.
Due to the increased perception of risk, the population is more strongly oriented towards insurance protection. In both East and West Germany, more than half of the population advocates having the most comprehensive insurance coverage possible for their families. The risks against which the population feels it is most important to be protected-and against which the East German population has felt a markedly increasing desire for insurance protection in the past three years-are: car theft, damage to one's automobile, liability claims, water damage and involvement in court cases. Parallel to the population's increased awareness of the need for protection, the level of insurance coverage has risen in both East and West Germany in the past three years, although coverage is still deficient in some areas since the population now has higher standards. There are still considerable differences in some areas when it comes to the East and West Germans' ideas of what qualities a good insurance company should have. East German consumers attach far greater importance to receiving competent advice, while West Germans, for example, place more emphasis on premium refunds and quick and satisfactory claims settlement. Although the majority of respondents say that price is not the deciding factor in choosing an insurance company, there is a tendency to change companies in order to take advantage of more favorable offers. The need for information is still far greater in East Germany than in the West, although the East German level is beginning to approach that of the West German population. This applies particularly to information about the various insurance options and the conditions on which insurance companies will pay. Corresponding to the need for information is the population's lack of knowledge about insurance. There are no signs, however, of any attempts on the part of the population to close up this information gap-on the contrary, it even appears to be widening.
This paper illustrates the creation of a monitoring system for the insurance market in Italy, which in recent years is undergoing rapid development. This continuous research programme, called SIMTASS, has as objective the supply of a detailed picture of the local market. The implementation of the SIMTASS methodology is based on a typological analysis of the Italian communes which , as been created using the large amounts of information in existence at commune level on the structure of the population, the economic structure and income. On the basis of this typological analysis 21 clusters of communes have been identified, internally homogeneous as communes but different from one another as clusters.