For IAG’s Zara Curtis, the combination of trust and scale can’t be beaten. She explains which channels the insurance business will ‘lean in’ to when there’s a need to drive action and convey credibility.
“Trust is absolutely critical to our brand strength,” says Zara Curtis, Chief Marketing Officer at IAG, parent company of insurance brands including NRMA, CGU and Swann Insurance.
With Australians enduring several natural disasters in recent years, having trust in their insurance provider has never been more crucial. And from a marketing perspective, it’s a smart starting point for a category that is often seen as low touch or set and forget. While consumers may not deal with their insurance providers often, knowing they can trust them to be there when help is needed is reassuring.
For Curtis, that means investing in quality media channels that have established trust in their own right. This is why news plays an important role in IAG’s media mix.
Curtis says: “If you are going to advertise around news, your message needs to be as believable and credible as the environment it's placed in. So brands need to have a good look at themselves and what they're actually saying. And what they're asking people to do. Leveraging the credibility of your own brand in a trusted environment is really critical.”
Beyond credibility, tangibility is another reason Curtis relies on news. The combination of print and digital assets that Total News offers provides a canvas for brand initiatives such as the ‘A Fire Inside’ campaign which saw NRMA share the emotional accounts of before and after the Black Summer bushfires.
A call to action of the campaign encouraged Australians to join the Resilience Corps, a training program developed in partnership with the Minderoo Foundation, to help communities improve their resilience before natural hazards strike. News was the perfect platform to drive that message home. “When we require action, or when we require credibility, that’s really when you'll see us lean in there,” says Curtis.
Getting back to basics
When it comes to IAG’s overall marketing approach, Curtis says her team always begins with the business problem. “As a marketer, it's my role and our entire team's role to know what business problem we're trying to solve in the first place. We'll then set one or two very clear objectives that answer that problem,” she says. “Setting a very clear problem with a clear target around what you want the outcome to be is the recipe for success.”
It's important to know the brand intimately, Curtis notes, before putting messages in-market. She says: “Understanding your brand, making sure that you really know your customer. And then being in the right places at the right time with the right message.”
Whether IAG is looking to build brand or drive a retail message, these fundamentals remain. Curtis reiterates, “Right context, right platform, right audience, right content. Tailored specifically, in line with the audience expectations and making sure we know how that's going to work through the funnel, and what it's going to do for our brand. That is our secret weapon.”
Choosing reliable and trusted channels
When it comes to selecting the best channels to achieve IAG’s goals, Curtis says her agency partners play an important role.
“We rely on our media agency, Initiative, for our recommendations. And our two latest campaigns were really built around news and news-related content,” she says.
Looking more broadly than breaking or general news, weather, specifically, is an ideal fit for IAG. The business has forged partnerships with several news publishers anchored on the weather.
“Using weather as part of our news platform has become really critical for NRMA insurance standing for HELP. It also then drops down nicely into our preparedness strategy around weather and climate change. And we can share deeper, richer stories,” says Curtis.
Curtis brings it back to trust. She says: “My opinion, as a marketer, is that trusted environments are going to win now more than ever. News will be relevant tomorrow and in the future.
“Marketers are always seeking scale. With news, we can combine scale and a trusted environment. It's a pretty powerful combination,” she says.
To find out more about how IAG is using Total News visit this link.
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