Ecclesiastical is a niche insurance provider selling both business and consumer insurance via brokers. Its B2B arm provides insurance to the charity, heritage, care, education and faith sectors.
Challenge
Its marketing problem was that its niches didn’t sit naturally together, and it had no competitor with the same set of niches to help turn it into a recognisable ‘category’. It therefore was effectively marooned in different niches depending on how a broker first came across them, resulting in low overall brand awareness with brokers and enormous difficulty in growing market share in any of their categories.
Solution
Research carried out prior to the campaign launch showed that despite low overall awareness, Ecclesiastical was still voted best performing insurer in all five of its niches. This formed the basis of the message it wanted to promote – that it was the best in every sector it worked in.
A creative route needed to be chosen that sat culturally with a company that was a million miles from the cut and thrust of the likes of Aviva and More Than. There could be no brash headlines saying “We’re number one”. Instead, a branding exercise needed to be undertaken to help it achieve standout.
The Ecclesiastical logo is distinctive, with the E in the shape of a kind and gentle hand. Ecclesiastical wanted to ‘own’ this hand imagery. An artist was drafted in to paint the hands, and the imagery was combined with the gentle line ‘You’re in safe hands’.
The new brand theme was incorporated in a video email, sent to the target audience of insurance brokers and showing the making of the painted hands. Costume hands were also paraded at an event held by the British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA), driving brokers to visit the Ecclesiastical stand via a competition. An integrated campaign included online and press advertising, email campaigns and a live event. Activity is running throughout the year.
Results
The campaign was deemed a major success by insurance standards, and on a modest budget of £126,622. There was a 35 per cent increase in visits to the broker homepage – ten per cent over the target set – and pre and post tracking showed that brand recall rose from 6 per cent to 30 per cent within five months of the campaign launch. It generated a 28 per cent increase in enquiries over the same period the previous year. At the BIBA event, more than 80 visitors were attracted to the stand, compared to less than 30 the year before. Brokers have even phoned their local branches to talk about the campaign.
Although the artwork was designed just for its B2B broker work, it has been adopted by the brand across its consumer business and for other product categories.
