Comperemedia Blog » Insurance

Next up, GEICO…

Tyler Nitz — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:48:38 +0000

Twitter

@TheGEICOGecko – 8,050 Followers & 1,236 Tweets
@GEICO – 6,845 Followers & 2,598 Tweets

GEICO’s Twitter pages, @TheGEICOGecko and @GEICO, were so-so. The number of followers was about a third of @StateFarm and @StateFarmNation, which is surprising because of the large Gecko following. GEICO does tweet almost every business day, mostly touching on popular marketing characters. GEICO does a nice job of intertwining their other social media pages with noticeable links that redirect followers to the GEICO Facebook and YouTube pages. As for the tweets…There is a nice mix of Gecko and recent events such as: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and shopping on Black Friday. However, they do a poor job of tweeting about current pop-culture events that connect with the average twitter demographic.

Overall, GEICO puts forth the effort on Twitter…just not to the level of State Farm Nation.

Twitter Grade: C+

Facebook

The GEICO Gecko – 201,080 “Likes”
GEICO – 198,666 “Likes”
GEICO Motorcycle – 5,002 “Likes”
GEICO Military – 952 “Likes”

GEICO has numerous Facebook pages, many more than the four I listed above (RV, Local Office, Nascar, Careers, Caveman, Kash, and Skytyperse to name a few). Not to mention Warren Buffet has a large following of over 200K. Character appeal is overly apparent with pages dedicated to each of GEICO’s marketing personalities, with the Gecko getting the most love.

GEICO does a great job of bringing the Gecko to life. You’ll notice a lot of pictures and videos of him on Trips to New York and Buffalo. Shots of the Gecko sightseeing at Niagara Falls…Hanging out with the Bills WR David Nelson at the Buffalo Zoo …Getting a self-portrait in Central Park…Even dancing with the Naked Cowboy in Time Square.

GEICO has a great thing going on Facebook, but again, they haven’t reach their max potential. Relying on the Gecko is working, but there is room for more.

Facebook Grade: B

YouTube

GEICO Channel – 16,705 Subscribers & 37,118,819 Million Uploads

GEICO has set the bar for the YouTube standard in the insurance industry. The number of video uploads and page subscribers far exceed GEICO’s competition. The abundance of activity is a result of successful advertising through various popular characters that star in the GEICO commercials. The Gecko is the most prominent TV personality on the YouTube page; however, Guinea Pigs, Mr. Butters and the Cockatoo, and the GEICO Question Guy make appearances.

On the top of the webpage, the Gecko is featured, in which consumers can “Follow the Gecko’s Journey.” This feature includes links to the Gecko Facebook page, the Gecko Twitter page, and GEICO.com.

The number of subscribers, views, and uploads says it all.

YouTube Grade: A

Overall Grade

GEICO has done a great job of leveraging the popularity of its television marketing. The Gecko is an obvious staple in GEICO marketing, but social media efforts need to be pushed further if they hope to connect with consumers on Facebook and Twitter. GEICO is one of the best in this space…I just think they can do better.

Social Media Grade: B+

Insurance Marketing on my iPhone

Gary Wooley — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:48:56 +0000

I recently embarked on a road trip that took me more than a day’s drive away. These kinds of trips used to be somewhat daunting when you took into consideration the various radio station offerings as you move into the more sparsely populated sections of the country. To help keep me alert and engaged while I’m driving, I’ve always enjoyed hearing something new and unexpected. In the past, satellite radio has been great for that but I recently discovered an alternative that works almost as well. Pandora. I’m able to set the types of things I want to listen to and make my own “Radio Stations” I just plug in my iPhone to the car’s sound system, and off I go.

Since I opt for the advertising supported version of Pandora, I occasionally hear an advertisement. Generally they are short, sweet and to the point. On this particular trip, I only heard one ad for what seemed like only a few times an hour. It was for American Family Insurance. The ads were very short and since I was an attentive audience for the better part of 16 hours I heard the ad many times. In fact, it was the only ad I heard while listening to Pandora on this trip. When I realized that I was only hearing a single ad for a single company I thought that was pretty astonishing. On regular radio when they go to a break you hear many ads for a variety of products and services. They are doing something a bit different here.

A few hours into my trip as I heard the American Family ad again, it made me think that I have also seen ads for American Family Insurance on one of the games I play on my iPhone. These aren’t product specific ads, more like company branding with the call to action to find out more about what American Family Offers. A simple message really, with the potential to stick.

It’s pretty clear that American Family is using the electronic/mobile media format as a way for their brand recognition campaigns to stand out from the clutter. One of the problems any marketer faces is that of getting an effective number of repetitions and in multiple formats for the message to be front and center in the consumer’s mind. In this case, I think American Family’s strategy is pretty effective. The company was definitely front and center for a while. It even got me to write a blog about it.

Life insurance reviews. Where are they?

Gary Wooley — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:02:32 +0000

The conventional wisdom is that the customer is king. They can wield a great deal of power, so what they say and think about your product is very important. A positive reputation among customers can definitely drive business to you. I got the opportunity to see the power of a positive reputation in action when I recently took a cruise to the Caribbean. On one of our stops, instead of booking an excursion through the cruise line, we elected to find and book one on our own. We were looking for a better and cheaper experience than what the cruise line was offering.

Once we were on shore and found the tour we booked, I took an informal survey among everyone in the group. I found they had all relied upon travel site reviews in order to make the decision to book this particular off-ship excursion. Everyone found the reviews from consumers that described the actual experience to be the most helpful. The vast majority of the hundreds of reviews for this particular excursion company were positive and complimentary, and set realistic expectations. A great mix when you are trying to book an excursion in a country you’ve never been to and want to feel comfortable with the decision.

In trying to find similar reviews of life insurance companies, I’ve discovered that there aren’t many good sources, and the ones I could find, I wouldn’t consider any to be a definitive or primary source to use as a guide. Most of the easy to find sites out there featured reviews that were highly negative, and carried a lot of emotional weight without much in the way of substance or context. I looked at the web sites for the major life insurers and didn’t find any with a link to an outside source for consumer reviews, which was a feature that the excursion company prominently highlighted and encouraged prospective customers to use. The idea of strength is a big talking point for life insurance companies. Usually, they are talking about financial strength, but what about strength from the point of view of the customer, or policyholder? The current situation is not very helpful for someone looking at life insurance and is used to finding lots of consumer reviews to help guide the decision.

Someone has to get the ball rolling for the life insurance industry, and if it’s not pulled, perhaps it can be pushed. There would be some challenges to overcome for a life insurer to make use of this type of consumer-driven tool. First, would be to find a site that is suitably unbiased and that provides a legitimate forum for discussion. Unlike many other industries, there isn’t a review site that’s gained traction yet for the life insurance industry. It would be tough to pick a platform without the ability to affect it, but it doesn’t do any good to have reviews if they aren’t taken seriously. The second challenge would be to get their customers to proactively write about their experiences on that site. Third, is to make the review site easily found by current and prospective customers. Checking for reviews is becoming the norm, even for little purchases. Life insurance is a serious purchase and too many consumers will continue to avoid buying it without some way to gauge the experiences of real people.

Is taking advantage of the consumers’ positive opinions impossible? No

Is it difficult? Yes.

Is the task worthwhile? Absolutely.

Next up, GEICO…

Tyler Nitz — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:01:04 +0000

Twitter

@TheGEICOGecko – 8,050 Followers & 1,236 Tweets
@GEICO – 6,845 Followers & 2,598 Tweets

Overall, GEICO puts forth the effort on Twitter…just not to the level of State Farm Nation.

Twitter Grade: C+

Facebook

The GEICO Gecko – 201,080 “Likes”
GEICO – 198,666 “Likes”
GEICO Motorcycle – 5,002 “Likes”
GEICO Military – 952 “Likes”

GEICO has a great thing going on Facebook, but again, they haven’t reach their max potential. Relying on the Gecko is working, but there is room for more.

Facebook Grade: B

YouTube

GEICO Channel – 16,705 Subscribers & 37,118,819 Million Uploads

The number of subscribers, views, and uploads says it all.

YouTube Grade: A

Overall Grade

Social Media Grade: B+

I’ve had it up to here with footnotes. Split messages are too easy

Gary Wooley — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:43:32 +0000

Marketers[1] especially those in the insurance and financial service industries, have an interesting tendency to split information into two[2] categories; their main point[3], and everything else[4]. The implied message goes upfront and is worded to ensure maximum readability and comprehension. Anything they don’t want to say, but usually must say for contractual, ethical or legal reasons, is obfuscated[5] in a completely different writing style, and relegated to the end in tiny[6] font sizes. To be sure, there are times when it’s appropriate to have a footnote, such as a citing a source just like you did in school on research papers[7], but most footnotes don’t seem to fall in this category.

A reader may tackle the onerous task of trying to fully read[8] a piece, which can quite often by word count be heavier in disclosure than in emphasized content, in one of a couple of ways.[9] First, they can completely ignore the concept of “fine print”, and read each footnote in conjunction with the emphasized text as it comes up[10][11]. Second, the reader can read all the footnotes all at once, and in sequence.[12]In my experience, neither is very effective if you want to get a full grasp of what the marketing piece is trying to convey.

Marketing materials created by a discloser[13] can seem to the reader that it doesn’t really matter how the footnoted information is formatted, or why it’s there or even what it’s trying[14] to say. The emphasis is for the desired points to be easily and quickly understood[15] to the exclusion of anything else. The way by which any context or supplemental information is conveyed and understood is apparently the least of a discloser’s concerns. There has to be a better way.

[1] Those folks that create, make, distribute, or are somehow responsible for marketing materials.

[2] There may be more than two, but for purposes of this blog, we will assume that two is perhaps not an absolute, but an approximate minimum, with the potential to include more than two but never less than two.

[3] Not a physical location.

[4] Not literally everything else, but rather anything associated with the desired message that isn’t the exact word-for-word message itself.

[5][5] To confuse, bewilder, or stupefy.

[6] Readers with reading glasses or other forms of magnifying lenses are advised to use them responsibly in the course of reading this blog.

[7] CMS, APA, Etc.

[8] By “read”, I mean “comprehend”

[9] The author makes no representation regarding the advisability, or feasibility of any particular method.

[10] Not feasible.

[11] Please be careful, as frequent back and forth page turns, if done too quickly, may light the paper on fire.

[12] The implied numerical order in this particular instance, but not to the inclusion of all other instances, is to go from the least, to the greatest.

[13] Someone who writes to merely disclose, rather than to ensure maximum comprehension

[14] Or not trying

[15] Yea, mission accomplished, you can go home now.

Updated Progressive Social Media Grades

Tyler Nitz — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 19:35:18 +0000

So while back, I graded Progressive’s social media sites, but after review other companies and due to Flo’s overwhelming popularity, I have decided to re-grade.

Twitter

@Progressive – 9,838 Followers & 4,245 Tweets
@ask_progressive – 4,189 Followers & 817 Tweets
@ItsFlo – 5,627 Followers (+100% from pervious blog/grade) & 605 Tweets (+ 300%)

Halloween might be the most active time of year for @ItsFlo. Various tweeters are tweeting about their Flo Halloween costumes. Progressive is using the hash tag #dresslikeflo and have a website http://www.progressive.com/dresslikeflo.aspx dedicated to helping consumers dress like Flo. The website has a list of items needed, “how to” video streams, a link to amazon if you want to buy the official Flo costume, a live feed of Flo’s Twitter, a link to Flo’s Facebook page, and a link to get the Flo-isms mobile app.

Based on the heavy activity on @ItsFlo, I must up my grade on Progressive’s Twitter efforts.

Twitter Grade: B+

Facebook

Flo The Progressive Girl Facebook Page – 3.23M “Likes” (+0.53M)
Progressive Facebook Page – 34,768 “Likes”
Progressive Motorcycle – 4,538 “Likes”

Flo’s Progressive Page continues to grow and does a great job of touching consumers on Facebook. The Flo Halloween costume in full force on the Flo The Progressive Girl Facebook page. Fans are posting pictures of their costumes and the amount of post is overwhelming. On Twitter you saw a couple of negative tweets to #dresslikeflo, but its all positive wall post and experiences shard on Flo’s Facebook page.

Progressive’s Motorcycle Facebook Page continues to impress, but Flo takes the cake here.

Facebook Grade: A

YouTube

Progressive Channel – 2,597 Subscribers & 5.3 Million Uploads (+2.6M!!!)

In just 6 months, the number of uploaded videos has doubled. That alone shows the success of Progressive’s YouTube page. Classic commercials staring Flo and The Messenger are available for stream. New additions include snapshot testimonials and dress like Flo videos, as well as updated videos on safety awareness and career information.

Again, the activity on Progressive’s YouTube page is above and beyond. I take back my previous grade.

YouTube Grade: A

Overall

Though I have never been a hug Flo fan, I have been pleasantly surprised with the overwhelming love for Flo during this Halloween season.

Social Media Grade: A

Next up, Aflac…

Tyler Nitz — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:25:38 +0000

Twitter

• @aflacduck – 12,0385 Followers & 2,539 Tweets

My primary focus has been grading P&C insurance company social media pages, but today I am switching my focus towards Aflac.

Aflac’s Twitter page, @aflacduck, was impressive. Similar to @StateFarmNation, the number of followers was notable, considering it’s an insurance page, and the content was more appealing to the average Twitter demographic. Recent tweets touched on the Saturday Night Live, College Football, Nascar, US Navy, and Cancer Research.

Aflac’s customer service Twitter page is not up to date and only has one tweet which states “contact Aflac HQ customer service at 800-99-aflac and we will be glad to assist you.” Very odd that they do not have a forum in which customers can share personal experience regarding Aflac’s products and services.

Twitter Grade: B

Facebook

Aflac Duck – 285,863 “Likes” • Aflac – 13,529 “Likes”

The content on the Aflac Duck Facebook page is similar to what was tweeted on its Twitter page. The main focus was on the Fight Against Childhood Cancer, in which individuals could donate money towards Aflac’s 2 million dollar goal. Video streaming was the main difference, offering the ability to watch various Aflac commercials. A list of the Aflac Duck’s “greatest hits” was available for viewing. The corporate page was nearly identical to the Aflac Duck page, minus the focus on the Duck.

Facebook Grade: C+YouTube

Aflac Insurance Channel – 761 Subscribers & 1,263,469 Million Uploads

The main focus on Aflac’s YouTube cannel centers on the Aflac Duck commercial series. In my opinion, this series of commercials are funny, but not funny enough to stream on YouTube. With over 1 million uploads, it’s apparent that the Duck does in fact have a following, however, not nearly as big as GEICO (34 Million), Allstate’s Mayhem (13 Million), and Progressive’s Flo (4 Million).

YouTube Grade: C+

Overall Grade When comparing to other Life insurance companies social media pages, Aflac is definetly the top performer, but I feel like there is room to take it to the next level.

Social Media Grade: B-

Pssst… Want to Buy Health Insurance?

Brad Boza — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:03:34 +0000

The majority of us have health insurance through our employers. What if you had to find health insurance on your own… let’s say after winning the lottery (one can dream) or starting your own business? How difficult would it be for you to find health insurance on your own initiative? Would the search take long? How expensive would coverage be? A side project from Seattle entrepreneur, Adam Doppelt, solved this problem with his intuitive insurance search engine called PickHealthInsurance.

PickHealthInsurance resulted from Mr. Doppelt having to find a health care plan to cover him and his family after his COBRA coverage ran out. The reason that his health insurance was running out was due to the sale of Urbanspoon, the company that he helped create, to IAC in 2009. He developed the PickHealthInsurance as a side project, which he completed over a few weekends.

The website that Adam created is very easy to navigate. One just has to input their age, ZIP code, and whether the insurance is for yourself, you and your spouse, or your family. Click the button at the bottom of the screen to find plans, and the results pop up on a new page. The nice thing about this search is that the website gives you additional information if you hover over a field (Coinsurance, anyone? What is that?!?). I particularly liked how a user can sort from lowest to highest on the deductible or the monthly premium.

The only drawback with PickHealthInsurance is that if the user is interested in purchasing the product, the site redirects them to the eHealthInsurance website. eHealthInsurance has developed multiple partnerships with different insurance providers to insurance products online and it is licensed to sell insurance in all 50 states. PickHealthInsurance gets their insurance data from searching the web, rather than from direct relationships with insurance providers. PickHealthInsurance is not licensed to sell insurance, which is why the site redirects the user to eHealthInsurance, where they can purchase it online. However, I personally found the PickHealthInsurance site somewhat easier to use and more informative than the eHealthInsurance website. Again, not bad for a few weekends of work. Now if only another entrepreneur could create an easy search engine, like PickHealthInsurance, for financial products like credit cards, saving accounts, or checking accounts…

Does Life Insurance Have to be Bland?

Gary Wooley — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 21:08:09 +0000

It’s a well-kept secret outside of the life insurance industry that September is Life Insurance Awareness Month (LIAM). Every year in September, the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education (LIFE), in conjunction with over 70 U.S. carriers of life insurance and a handful of support organizations, participate in the annual awareness campaign. The campaign seeks to increase awareness for the need for life insurance and the protection it can provide.

Through their website, lifehappens.org, LIFE provides consumers with information on the basics of life insurance, everything from the types of life insurance to reasons why it’s so important to have. The site also provides carriers and producers with marketing toolkits to take advantage of the campaign. The kits include a variety of practical materials such as downloadable flyers, customizable articles, sales ideas, and ways to implement a variety of marketing tactics. Of particular interest to me were testimonial videos with real-life stories about how life insurance affected their lives. Unfortunately, they just didn’t go far enough and produce videos with some intense emotional impact.

The videos revolved around a few different themes, about the tragic and unexpected need for life insurance, how much they were glad they had it, and the worthwhile relationship they had with the agent. The stories were genuine and laid out a great narrative for the true value that life insurance can provide during the tragic aftermath of a loved-one’s death. There was some real potential in these real-life stories about the successful application of life insurance. Unfortunately, the narrative mostly felt cold, and a bit contrived. There was too much reliance on the background music to create the mood, rather than allowing anyone to tell their story with a real outpouring of emotion. I was surprised that they neglected to include examples of the financial devastation that can happen to a family that doesn’t have any life insurance. That would have had the potential to really drive home the point that you can really harm your loved ones if you aren’t properly insured. It’s tough to convey how tragic it is when a loved-one dies and the difficulties that can cause, but you don’t get there by merely dipping your toe in the water.

If you’re a fan of the show Weeds, you know that the main character of Nancy Botwin (played by Mary-Louise Parker) turned to selling pot because her husband died, leaving the family with a very upper middle class lifestyle and absolutely no way to maintain it. For me, that kind of negative outcome is a far more effective motivator. Don’t get me wrong, the stories on the LIAM website were quite sweet, but their sugary wistfulness was actually unnerving considering that they were talking about the aftermath of the death of a loved one. The emotions were all turned way, way down. Perhaps out of respect for the departed I don’t know, but it seems to me if you want to help people avoid the financial catastrophe and onslaught of hardship brought on by the combination of the death of a loved one and the sudden lack of cash flow, you’d want to light a metaphorical fire to get them to move.

Recent studies have shown that most Americans know about life insurance. They know the need for it, but at any given moment they just can’t be bothered to go out and make that purchase. The folks at LIFE had an excellent opportunity to provide videos with intense stories and displays of emotion to give consumers an emotionally charged reason to buy life insurance; something beyond the intellect. They just didn’t do it.

Next up, Allstate…

Tyler Nitz — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:37:42 +0000

Twitter

@Allstate – 4,206 Followers & 5,060 Tweets
@GHCommunity – 1,913 Followers & 1,747 Tweets

I was not impressed with Allstate’s Twitter pages due to the lack of interesting topics to follow. The corporate page is standard, but the Good Hands Community needs some work. I understand Allstate goes after an older demographic, but its tweets come off as boring to someone of my demographic. Family safety, saving money, and preparing for what’s next are the main themes on its page. All are important topics, but here is an obvious lack pop culture tweets on both sites. How about hot topics, ideas, perspectives, and attitudes that are currently relevant?

State Farm has set the bar with its State Farm Nation, and unfortunately GHCommunity just doesn’t compare. There are important issues discussed, however, there is nothing that sets Allstate above the competition.

Twitter Grade: D+

Facebook

Mayhem – 1,035,830 “Likes”
X the TXT – 122,914 “Likes”
Save 11 – 100,821 “Likes”
Soy La Mala Suerte – 53,878 “Likes”
Allstate – 34,979 “Likes”

Allstate runs multiple Facebook pages, with the most popular being Mayhem and a corporate page. The Mayhem personality is more popular, which has seen constant growth with updated commercial stream. Mayhem recently joined State Farm Nation, Flo The Progressive Girl, and Farmers as the only insurance pages to surpass the 1 million fan mark. Many fans comment on actor, Dean Winters, who has become a popular fictional character in the insurance. Fans are even able to post their own personal “mayhem” videos.

The corporate page is currently running an EA Sports sweepstakes, with the chance to win NCAA 2012 every day until September 30^th. Allstate has done a good job of incorporating its traditional “Good Hands” embedded within the net in-between the goal post.

X the Text and Save 11 support great causes by promoting awareness of texting while driving and Graduated Driver Licensing laws. X the Text page lacks depth, however, Save 11 engages individuals by encouraging them to write to congress in support of Graduated Driver Licensing laws. The number 11 reflects the average number of teens that are killed in car crashes every day, totaling 4,000 deaths per year.

Companies are beginning to build Spanish based pages for Latino customers, with Allstate and State Farm leading the way by recruiting fans at a fast rate.

Overall, Allstate seems to have relevant content and entertaining media, which has kept its audience engaged. Farmers and State Farm have exceeded the 1 million mark, without the popular figures such as Flo and Mayhem. Think of what Allstate and Progressive could be if they took its other pages to the next level.

Facebook Grade: A-

YouTube

Allstate Insurance Channel – 5,309 Subscribers & 12,736,697 Million Uploads
Allstate News Channel – 20,940 Uploads

The main focus on Allstate’s YouTube cannel centers on the Mayhem commercial series. In my opinion, this series of commercials are some of my favorite on television. With nearly 13 million uploads, it’s apparent that I’m not the only one who feels this way. 13 million uploads crushes progressive’s 4 million; however, it’s a long way from GEICO’s 34 million. Though Allstate airs other commercials featuring, Denis Haysberg, Mayhem driving the traffic. Allstate News touches on different safety issues, but the site has not received a lot of traffic.

Mayhem alone puts Allstate near the top of the YouTube insurance community.

YouTube Grade: A-

Overall Grade

Allstate has road the momentum that Mayhem has brought them since the end of last year. This alone puts them near the top of the social networking insurance communities. Twitter needs work and there is still room to growth, but Allstate will need to go beyond traditional models and think outside of the box. So far so good…

Social Media Grade: B