Marketing Campaign of the Year - B2B
This category seeks to recognise a stand out marketing campaign specifically targeted at the business market and is open to all businesses operating in the UK insurance market, including agencies.
Judges were looking for creativity, innovation and original thinking in media, message and execution. Entrants were expected to be able to demonstrate a tangible contribution to business success.
All the finalists are listed below. Use the links to find out more from the entrants who have answered our series of Q&As.
AXA Insurance
What key achievement did your entry highlight?
Our entry recognises a true team effort, in response to the Coronavirus crisis, to providing practical support and guidance to our broker partners and their clients.
Can you share data or testimonials to back up your bid to win?
We’ve received lots of positive feedback from brokers and clients alike, with comments such as:
‘the risk management guides you are currently producing are really good… we have been providing them to clients who have given excellent feedback.’
‘Your Covid-19 updates, and in particular the Business Support - Back to Business guides, are excellent. They are by far the best of the communications we have received.’
The numbers also back up these comments, with over 10,000 brokers engaging with our updates, and record traffic to our broker website axaconnect.co.uk
What sets your firm apart from the other shortlisted contenders?
This wasn’t a B2B marketing campaign in a conventional sense, but the activity had the attributes of a successful marketing campaign, communicating important messages quickly, clearly and effectively.
The engagement and feedback we’ve received has indicated we enabled brokers and clients to have more informed conversations and helped guide their response to the crisis.
How will you celebrate if you are the victor?
If we win, the first thing we’d do is share the news with the huge number of people around the UK who have been involved in this activity, from across the AXA group, our business partners and our brokers. Winning would be great recognition for the energy and commitment they’ve all shown through a time of great uncertainty.
Direct Commercial Ltd
What key achievement did your entry highlight?
The fact that since the creation of the team turnover and our agency base has more than doubled, enquiry numbers are significantly up, we have a social media presence and fantastic marketing collateral which includes (but we had not previously mentioned) our DCL Exhibition Lorry and the team fleet of cars which provide brand awareness on the road to the sort of clients that would most benefit from our services, via their brokers - Haulage and Transportation businesses.
Can you share data or testimonials to back up your bid to win?
Its all in the figures. We have seen exponential growth and have laid foundations for the momentum to continue.
What sets your firm apart from the other shortlisted contenders?
No one within the team had any marketing experience but we knew it was about making sure our message got through and if we did get it right the rest would fall into place. Understanding your target market is the most important thing when trying to promote something and we were in the enviable position of having been in the shoes of those we were wanting to talk to! We market to brokers but do it in such a way that brokers can use it to market to their clients.
How will you celebrate if you are the victor?
Ideally it would be seeing each other in person without having to worry and have a great meal. The world of video conferencing will have changed how we work forever so we might have to try a meal by video. We will certainly be delighted to shout about it in as many ways, and as often as opportunity allows.
Markel UK
What key achievement did your entry highlight?
We were voted the number one commercial insurer by brokers in the Insurance Times Five Star annual survey and used a celebratory event and 468 Markel UK employees to reach a target audience of 100,000+ to communicate the win within hours of the official announcement.
In just nine working days of learning about the win at a private meeting we created a joint internal employee, and external broker, campaign to amplify the news.
What sets your firm apart from the other shortlisted contenders?
We don’t tend to dwell on decision making and this was another example of that. Our employee culture is very positive and the desire to support brokers extremely strong.
That really goes to the heart of why we won this award and, despite having just nine days between learning about the win and the information going public, we wanted to do something special.
We devised and delivered an extensive campaign thanking brokers for their support. A message that was amplified by staff who were tasked with personally sharing the good news amongst our broker network.
How will you celebrate if you are the victor?
In essence the celebrations began in January when the news first broker that brokers gave Markel UK such a fantastic vote of confidence in the Insurance Times survey itself. To win this award would be further vindication that brokers are increasingly turning to Markel for their insurance solutions and acknowledging the importance of our ‘Expect More’ campaign.
Recognition of the good work our team tries to do every day to deliver this would be an extremely positive message for all concerned, so if we were successful, we would absolutely celebrate internally as well as showing our appreciation externally too.
Paymentshield
What key achievement did your entry highlight?
After research we conducted with UK Finance found a £47.8m commission gap from missed General Insurance (GI) sales in 2019 alone, we launched the “illuminate” campaign to shine a light on the GI opportunity for advisers to ignite conversations with clients, grow their business, and recoup an otherwise untapped income stream.
Since the onset of coronavirus, we adapted the campaign slightly to focus on how GI can help illuminate the path to growth for advisers. Our vision throughout, however, has always remained the same: to empower and champion the adviser community to advise on GI.
Can you share data or testimonials to back up your bid to win?
Our research found that 60% of advisers regularly missed GI opportunities; since the campaign’s launch, 700+ firms who had not quoted with us prior to August have now quoted on a GI policy.
We have seen strong returns across our initiatives: our 22% discount on Home Insurance led to a rise of 165% in the run-rate of daily quotes; unique views of materials in our new CPD centre stand at 1250+; and since the launch of our Adviser Hub, we have exceeded numerous KPIs – users rose 47.9% (target 20%), with an 86.4% increase in unique users (target 20%).
Jennifer Ripley
What sets your firm apart from the other shortlisted contenders?
Recognising the volatility in the market due to Covid-19, we leveraged the “illuminate” campaign to focus on GI as a vehicle of recovery, regrowth, and dependable income for advisers throughout and beyond lockdown.
We launched a series of on-demand webinars to help advisers embed GI into their sales process, delivered a virtual conference with over 1,000 registrations and 17 partners, and ultimately created a community from which advisers were able to learn best practice, inspire and support one another and work together – no matter where they were in the country – to return to growth.
How will you celebrate if you are the victor?
The Insurance Times Awards was one of the highlights of last year for us, and we are hoping to recreate the atmosphere this time round, albeit virtually. Expect tone-deaf karaoke of Queen, Bon Jovi, and Journey from each member of the Paymentshield Marketing team.