News

The More Than brand, owned by Royal & SunAlliance, is well-known in the general insurance sector, and up until 2006 had based its marketing on a dog called Lucky.

Brand: More Than
Client: Royal & SunAlliance
Brief: To reposition the brand using direct channels and increase sales
across car, home and pet insurance products
Target audience: Lapsed customers and lookalikes

Budget: Undisclosed

Agency: Stephens Francis Whitson

CHALLENGE

The general insurance market in the UK is a crowded place. Customers can choose from almost 400 providers, and many do so on price alone, aided by the recent boom in price comparison websites.

The More Than brand, owned by Royal & SunAlliance, is well-known in the general insurance sector, and up until 2006 had based its marketing on a dog called Lucky. But research showed that while customers liked the character and remembered the advertising, they didn't recall enough about the brand or its products.

STRATEGY

Royal & SunAlliance wanted to revamp the brand, moving away from Lucky to focus on product benefits. It opted to move a significant proportion of its brand budget into responsive media.

"There are areas of wastage in brand spend, and a lot of insurance advertising doesn't stand out," says Pete Markey, head of communications at More Than. "We identified areas that weren't working, took money out of our brand spend and invested it in direct marketing."

More Than's marketing budget was also down 10 per cent compared with last year.

EXECUTION

The campaign, developed with agency Stephens Francis Whitson, used a range of direct channels, starting with a TV campaign in spring 2006 before moving into other media.

- TV and radio: Brand and direct response television commercials showed life returning to normal after customers had made insurance claims for events such as car accidents. Ads used the tagline: 'We do more.'

- Responsive radio ads and posters: These were supported by newspaper advertising. Marketing materials carried a website address and phone number as a call to action.

- Direct mail: Direct mail was sent exclusively to previous respondents and lapsed customers across the home, car and pet insurance sectors. More than a million packs were sent during a nine-month period.

- Door drops: These aimed to support More Than's wider marketing and were distributed in areas with similar geodemographic profiles to those with high response rates. The firm worked with underwriters to calculate the zones where it could offer its most competitive quotes and targeted them too.

- Search marketing: Both pay-per-click and natural search programmes were put in place.

- Telemarketing: The brand stepped up its outbound telemarketing across in-house and outsourced call centres.

"The key to successful telemarketing is the relevance of the call," says Markey. "We contact prospects around their renewal date with the aim of generating a quote to save them time and money. It's a service benefit and we work hard to get it right."

RESULTS

The move to a more responsive integrated campaign led to a 20 per cent sales increase across the car, home and pet insurance categories, with cost per sale reduced by the same amount.

DM in particular proved cost-effective, with conversion rates up 300 per cent compared with previous activity. The targeted door-drop campaign also saw response rates rise 23 per cent.

"Brand investment remains critical, but you need to spend enough so that people know about you. We're now getting that balance right," says Markey.

More Than has refreshed the campaign for 2007, broadening the scheme by buying cold lists and extending into email marketing.