Raise your hand if you hate insurance companies.

By Rick Stanton, 

Creative Director / President

There are certainly any number of insurance companies doing nicely produced, category atypical TV ads these days.  Geico, Allstate and Progressive to name a handful.  But do they communicate the right message?  Having worked on several insurance accounts, I can tell you with great reliability that people hate insurance companies.  First of all, it’s a grudge purchase.  You don’t want to but you know you have to buy it.  Secondly, you suspect with good reason that should you need to use it, you won’t have the right coverage, the company will find a way to avoid paying and when all is said and done they will drop you like a rock.  Or raise your rates to the degree where you can’t afford it anymore.  Cute ads aside, Progressive has one of the most hideous records around for not paying.  And our oh-so-friendly-a-lot-like-us local Pemco dropped a friend of mine after 25 years because the house he insured through them all of a sudden was undesirable due to the nature of the exterior. The same exterior they knew about 25 years prior.  Good, honest insurance companies of which there are a few, understand the need to create trust. Period. That is the most powerful barrier buster in the industry.  


I have included two links.  The first one will take you to a recent article in Forbes about the new “cute” in insurance advertising.  The second one will take you to a campaign we did for Sterling Health Plans.

It was inexpensive relatively speaking, it’s the truth told well through the eyes of Sterling customers and it worked.  The first year of the campaign, Sterling’s business was up 68% while the category was up 9%.

Viewers could see themselves in our ads. And frankly, it’s always better when someone other than you tells someone else how great you are.

Read this article and view the ads. They are indeed clever but do little to communicate real trust.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2011/10/11/insurance-ads-a-new-creative-class-emerges/

And here is a little responsible thinking. Maybe not all that sexy, but damn they worked.