Mail puts the fun in insurance with Ed Birth - transcript

Rory

Hello and welcome to another episode of Mail Unleashed. Brought to you by the lovely folks at Marketreach. And today it's my joy to be joined by someone actually, I've always wanted to quiz anyway. He’s Ed Birth. Who is the Head of Brand Marketing at that wonderful insurance company Hiscox. And you've been there, I think since 2022? And you were formerly agency side for actually a remarkably long time. Is it about 16 years?

Ed

That's right. Yeah, maybe even a bit longer. So thank you for having me. First of all, it's very exciting, to be here.

Rory

You are fundamentally differentiated your strategy from other insurance companies. In that 90% of insurance companies basically just say, save money on your insurance. And you are almost saying the opposite. Spend more on insurance because you're worth it, if you like.

Ed

Absolutely. And we set ourselves up as a specialist. And the whole reason you would buy Hiscox, is that you buy into the narrative. That a specialist can serve your needs in a way that a generalist can't.

Rory

So you would target higher net worth individuals, but you also target people with a specialist need. The idea being that it's risky getting generalist insurance if you're not a kind of average person.

Ed

Exactly. So if you're, you know, for example, we sell a lot of business insurance to accountants. And when we're talking to accountants, we show up with an understanding and hopefully an insight in our in our comms that shows we really we really get what it's like to be an accountant. Look, we understand your risks and your realities. Therefore we would be a great person to to insure us. And it's really interesting when we come to sort of talk about effectiveness to our organisation. We have found that the way to do it is through lots and lots of different lenses. You can't just go, look it's just on the attributable sales.

We end up building a picture of all of the different things at once. So we say, oh, here's the effect it had on hearts and minds through our tracking. Oh, by the way, it had a halo effect on the London markets business. And on the broker business as well.

Rory

Which it would do wouldn't it?

Ed

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. On all of this. And I think coming back to that point about being a specialist. Because we set ourselves up as a specialist, that is why we go to market in the way that we do as a brand. That's why we try not to look like. If we look like Aviva or AXA or Zurich. It's wrong for Hiscox. We use our creativity to bring that to life in a really interesting way. And in this case, we've we've partnered with, Specsavers and Cillit Bang and Weetabix. To have this sort of faux copyright infringement moment. Which is quite playful. But I think the important thing with creativity. Is that you need to bring a bit of humor with it when you're bringing, risks to life.

Rory

I mean one strategy is pure fear isn’t it?

Ed 

So what's the antidote to pure fear? We don't want to be a business that sells on fear. But yet we do want to talk about the risks. And so the antidote to that is humour. So you wrap what is often quite a punchy, selly risk based message in this wrapper of humor. You can. You know, it gets underneath the guard and it doesn't feel like fear mongering. And that works in the business space. I would argue that our DM campaign for home and contents does exactly the same. It brings to life, what could be a scary risk, but with a bit of levity.

Rory

You brought that with you. In fact, haven't you?

Ed

We've got a prop.

Rory 

You've got a prop. Wonderful.

Ed 

It's nice to be able to, bring a prop along. That's one of the beauties of direct mail.

Rory

And so this glorious thing arrives on your letterbox, already stained with red wine.

Ed

Exactly. And we just. We just we knew we wanted to bring a risk to life. We wanted to pick one that wasn't in it. This is people's home. Yes. So you want to pick something that's too catastrophic? Go in on the fact that your house might burn down. And that might be a little bit triggering. So something, you know, it's fairly gentle and playful. And so, we wanted to sort of pass that test of when it lands on the mat. We want this to be the first thing that somebody picks up. Because it's just got that intrigue and you think, what's going on here? And so it, it lands, it's personalised. And it looks or presents as a regular letter. And you think, well, what's happened to this? And it follows through onto the inside. And the whole letter itself is, seemingly stained in wine.

And, you know, hopefully at this point. You're still thinking, what on earth is going on here? And then the letter itself, sort of. I think the agency have done a great job at sort of elegantly starting out with that story of the. The most expensive bottle of wine in your home isn't always the one in your wine rack. It's the one that spilt on your carpet. On your Persian rug. Or your antique furniture or whatever. And then, you know. The DM goes on to, to unpack some aspects of our brilliant home and contents insurance.

Rory

It’s a perfect example too. Because it hasn't happened to you. It's happened to someone you know. Exactly. Now my guess is you use direct mail, in part because you think it inspires trust. In other words, this company is, as you say. I think isn't the skint. Okay? They do actually care enough about me to occasionally put a stamp on a letter and communicate with me. Not everything is done from a penny pinching point of view.

Ed

So I can give a little bit of context on the campaign and why we ended up with direct mail at the centre of it. We didn't come to this brief saying. Agency, please give me a direct mail solution. Please help me reach this audience. Instead, it was pretty neutral. So we've got this very niche and targeted, home insurance proposition. So direct mail is a lovely channel for that. So it allows us to have great impact. For those who we are sending it to. But absolutely. You don't know how who else has seen it. No over show. And I think the other two parts of direct mail that we're really important. Obviously your wealth is closely linked to your property. So we can target by individual postcodes, you know. Oh, that's a nice big house. We'll send it to them. We won't send it to the street below. Which probably won't have the home and contents value that we need. So you've got that. The other clever thing is we got, renewal data from a third party. So we knew when people were likely to be, renewing their home and contents insurance. And we took that data, we took the geographical data and put it together.

Rory

So the right where and the right when, as well as the who.

Ed

Yeah. Exactly. It's pretty straightforward. And then I suppose the cherry on the cake. Was that the format was really attractive. So, the fact that it is so tangible. It doesn't feel like so much of the kind of digital comms that.

Rory

How well did it work without giving away trade secrets?

Ed

I'll talk to you about how we assess the effectiveness of it. There's there's a couple of KPIs. So one is the kind of, one you'd expect. The kind of short term. Did people phone in? We've got trackable phone numbers. And we're really pleased with the number of calls.

Rory

So your call centre metrics are very different from the call centre metrics. The kind of resentful call centre metrics in most businesses.

Ed 

Completely and our customer satisfaction, is absolutely fantastic. Our net promoter score. Because we've got this incredibly slick operation.

And, you know, other kind of call central operations might be trying to get you through the call as quickly as possible. It’s completely different, set of expectations.

Rory

I mean, I've always argued that a very, very good call center person should be able to earn six figures. The only reason they can't is they can't lay claim or prove as a salesman could. Okay. You know, their full value. Because it will manifest itself in things like retention. You know, win back all manner of things. Often you know, which aren't directly attributed to the actions of the call centre person. But that actually one of the things that strikes me as terrible. Is that, those 

Not as a source of value creation. It's a completely wrong framing. And the same be true of direct mail marketing activity by the way. Partly because the very fact it tells some discretionary expense.

Ed

Exactly. Is a proof point. Exactly. And it comes back to, you know, understanding that you're a specialist. And understanding that what you offer is not the lowest common denominator. It is. You know, we understand where the value comes. Our CC team would be very pleased to hear that. They should all be earning megabucks. I'm inclined to agree with you, particularly for some of these guys who are absolutely brilliant. They are they are proper experts.

Rory

The call centre, is a brand building tool in itself. In particular, you can tell emotionally how the call is being handled. Whether effectively the person is being treated as value add. Or a cost to be minimised. And consumers tell the difference. I'd also say that the use of direct mail in and of itself. Is a brand building tool, regardless of any creativity.
You then layer on top of it. Because it says, well, first of all, because you're real, you actually exist in the real world. But also I think it says something just as the nature of a well handled call will say something. It says something that you're not one of those businesses which is so enthralled to the shareholder value movement. That you regard everything is basically a transaction cost to be minimised. Not a relationship to be maximised. But then on top of that, as you've shown. You can layer on extraordinary creativity. I mean by the way. I think that opening paragraph, whoever the copywriter is. The most expensive bottle of wine you have in your home isn't necessarily the one in your cellar. It's the one that someone brings from Oddbins, which tips over your carpet. Is an absolutely fantastic observation in itself.

Ed

It's a nice line. And I think the phrase I use when we're talking about this is, is body language. So, what is the body language that we are communicating when we, we mail somebody? And I completely agree. It's, you know, I am a proper company. That has the facility to send stuff via the post. I value that I can see that you're not purely, a kind of a digital. It’s one of the challenges with digital is people are very suspicious of almost everything that comes up digitally. And not wrongly.

And so you know, you could be suspicious of mail as well if you want to.

But it's just a much more trusted format really. So I think when it arrives, that's what it's implying. It's saying okay. It's Hiscox I've heard of them. They've taken the trouble to mail me. They're obviously not about to fold overnight. Because they've got the money for marketing. Yeah. They've done it properly. Even, it's on proper paper. It's not on this sort of cheapest stuff. You know, all of this sort of stuff subconsciously communicates value. And, you know. One of the things, I talk about as a Head of Brand. Is that brand is not just your advertising. It's literally every single touchpoint adds up. You know, it's interesting, particularly with mail, you know. You can see it doing different jobs at different levels of the funnel. So if you, you know, if we're talking to somebody. Who's actually maybe not ready to buy right now. We are still having an effect. We're showing up an interesting way.

We’re hitting people's memories. And we're beginning to tell the story of the value.

Rory 

By the way, we we always forget this. But the fact people have heard of you. Is a phase transition in terms of someone's readiness to engage with the business. In other words. Heard of them before versus who are they?
You know. It's not an incremental change in levels of awareness. It's complete game changer. With mail, you also have a fantastic thing. Which is, you're showing people the courtesy of communicating in a way that acknowledges that not everybody's thinking about insurance all the time.So I think there's a statistic. That I think, over a 28 day period, the average piece of direct mail receives 132 seconds of attention. That's quite a good statistic. But more important is that those 132 seconds, on average. Probably occur at the opportune moment for them to do something about it.

Ed

Yeah. Yeah. It's sat on the side and you can have a flick through it.

Rory

You put it on as I said. You put it on the toast rack. When you were in the moment to think about this thing. Funnily enough I have an offer for a business credit card. Which I’ve been. You know, I've actually, you know, printed it out and stored it. Bizarrely, although it arrived digitally. For the simple reason that. Look, you know. I'm not in the mood for doing this now. But it's something I'll have to do in the next couple of weeks. And I think that timeliness question. Which is. You know. There’s something highly courteous about direct mail and that it says. You know, when you've got a moment in it's admin time. Particularly true of anything financial. Because you know, we’re not going to interrupt a party to talk about insurance.

Ed

Absolutely.And you know when you compare it to other direct channels, to the audience you know. Email is a brilliant channel. But, for a prospecting task. It's really, really hard, you know. Everyone knows what their email inbox looks like. It's you know. Hundreds, thousands of emails a day. And with mail you can be one of sometimes one of one. Sometimes you know, one of two, one of three. And you know, your share of voice in sort of traditional media terms. Can be absolutely massive.

Rory

I mean, I think the enemy of marketing comes from economics. Which is the idea that people know what they want in advance. Which they don't. Okay. The idea that, how you present the information, you know. Is irrelevant to people's behavior. And also it assumes complete trust. None of these things is even remotely true. And yet they're foundational assumptions of kind of neoliberal economics. Which is permeated, I think, through the finance department, into the thinking of business.

Ed

There's lots of evidence that says multimedia campaigns are more effective than single channel campaigns. And that makes sense to that point, right? Oh, I've seen it in a few different places. I’m building up this reassurance.

Rory

The idea that attention and conviction are kind of additive.

Ed 

Yeah, a medium multiplier effect. You know, it's back to that term of body language, actually. I like body language because it says that a lot of this is implicit. You know, I don't sit there and decode the body language of you sat opposite me. But I'm always getting always cues. And you know, that's the way our minds have evolved. So, I like to think of brands in the same way.

Rory

And I think it is wonderful that you've managed for this pretty long period of time. To escape the commodification and cost reduction. Well, this has been an absolute joy. I'm glad to say that all your findings, both in terms of the value of creativity and the value of physicality. Chime pretty well with something I've been feeling more and more strongly over the last few years. Well all I can say Ed. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on Mail Unleashed. It's been an absolute joy. And to, just to the punters out there. If you'd like to know more about this and how you can unleash the power of direct mail in your business. All you need to do is head over to marketreach.co.uk See you next time.