Liberty to embrace life’s simple joys

Late April saw the launch of a national branding campaign for Liberty Insurance, featuring the tagline ‘Embracing Simple Joys’, fronted by national swimmer Quah Zheng Wen.

The campaign showcases Quah as he prepares for the Olympic Games taking place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, later this year.

The new messaging aims to demonstrate that the company is focused on helping customers remove the complexity and confusion that is usually associated with insurance, Teo said.

“By making life simpler for customers, we want to enable more Singaporeans to spend quality time with their family and loved ones, and, in doing so, embrace the simple joys in life,” he said.

The company reached out to the Olympic hopeful, as he is a “great role model who can inspire younger generations of athletes to pursue their dreams.”

“He is also someone who truly embraces the simple joys in life, such as walking his dog or reading a book, when he is not busy training for competitions,” said Teo.

The yearlong initiative will be featured on print, radio, out-of-home and various digital platforms. The brand recently appointed creative agency Blak Labs for the brand launch, and The Media Shop as its media agency.

Prior to the official launch, the company also launched an internal campaign to get staff and intermediaries excited.

“For example, we set up a ‘Joy Wall’ in the office to get people to post messages regarding their simple joys in life,” said Two, adding that the initiative received “really good engagement” from staff.

Teo declined to share how much was spent on the branding campaign, or how much the company spends annually on its marketing initiatives.

Upping the table stakes

Liberty Insurance Singapore is a wholly owned strategic business unit of Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, a Boston-headquartered company that recorded revenue of US$37.6 billion and consolidated net income of US$534 million in 2015.

“Not many people are aware that Liberty Insurance is actually ranked higher than Nike or McDonald’s on the Fortune 500 list,” said Teo.

In Singapore, Liberty Insurance is considered the seventh largest general insurer, and the sixth largest motor insurer.

Globally, over 50,000 people work in Liberty across 19 countries. Within APAC, the company operates in China (including Hong Kong), India, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

The company is seeking to stand out in the marketplace by moving beyond traditional messages related to protection and peace of mind.

“But these are table stakes that customers expect their providers to deliver in the first place,” said Teo. “What we want to achieve is to share not just a different message, but a meaningful one.”

He added that the new tagline reflects the company’s “brand DNA”, which is that everyone at Liberty is focused on keeping the entire insurance process simple for customers, so that they can focus on the little things in life that matter the most to them.

Teo’s job designation as the head of both marketing and analytics reflects the position of importance the sphere of analytics and business intelligence has internally, a resource that many organizations are hoping to better leverage internally.

He added that at Liberty, marketing strategy is closely tied to business strategy and it is not good enough to simply come up with a tagline that appeals to people.

“More importantly we need to deliver on our brand promise,” said Teo. “This means that at Liberty, our processes and people must be geared up to always keep things simple for our customers, be it buying insurance or making a claim.”

He pointed to the company’s new motor claims solution, which has been designed to make it easy for customers to report an accident, repair their vehicle, and get access to a replacement car.

The marketing team works closely with the various business functions, such as underwriting, sales and claims, to drive the implementation of data-driven insights across its operations.

“This gives me deeper insights into our overall business, which in turns influences our marketing strategy to ensure that we can tailor our messages to engage a specific audience,” he added.

In addition, the team is constantly testing new and different ideas when it comes to marketing, and analytics aids in expediting successful campaigns.

“It’s an important enabler that helps us to measure how our campaigns are doing, and to identify the key drivers of a successful campaign, so that we have the ability to quickly scale things up,” Teo added.

With the current branding campaign, he adds that a “quick win” would be for more people to see or hear about it, and respond positively to it.

“For me, the real test lies in converting more people into our brand advocates - who will actively recommend their family and friends to buy from Liberty Insurance,” said Teo.