Opinion | It’s Time for an Industry Marketing Reset. Let’s Show the World What Insurance Can Really Do

By: | March 28, 2022

Dan Reynolds is editor-in-chief of Risk & Insurance. He can be reached at [email protected].

How many marketing professionals does the insurance industry employ? Hundreds? Thousands?

And such hard workers they are, designing campaigns, riding herd on the media to make sure the brands they promote come off sparkling.

All well and good. And truly, well intentioned or at least on-point professionally.

Or are they?

More fairly, are we?

A former Risk All Star, Zachary Finn, director of risk management for the Henriott Group, has derided the industry at large, not just the commercial insurance industry, for its approach to advertising: The emus, the geckos, you name it.

Here I stand on his shoulders to deliver another point: Commercial insurance, despite the dedication and professionalism of so many, is still missing the boat when it comes to marketing itself. I’m not referring to the efforts on behalf of individual companies; I’m talking about how the industry as a whole presents itself to the world.

So what’s missing, you ask?

What’s missing is marketing and advertising that touches on the drama and the humanity of what this industry does. I’m talking about messaging with scope and gravity, presented creatively. Something along the lines of a sober, factual television ad that recounts disasters, be they personal, regional, national or global, and tells the world how insurance raised up and restored the fallen.

Remember those TV ads portraying a Native American weeping at the edge of a polluted lake?

Yes, fellow boomers, we sure remember that one.

That ad worked because of the gravity of it — it represented something real. Insurance is real. What insurance does is real. Isn’t it time insurance presents a face to the world that says it cares and it means business? &

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