CheezeDMG Blog

So according to the Association of British Insurers, liars are on the up.  BBC business reported earlier today that an increasing number of people are lying on their insurance policy applications to gain a better premium.

A dangerous game people are playing. Let’s hope that deception to get the best premium isn’t too much of an emerging trend…it’s certainly a cynical way to ‘get the best price’, but the point I would make is that it shouldn’t be ignored when putting together a search strategy. No consumer trend should.

If the message and proposition in 2009 is all about the combination of price point and reassurance (after all, we can only go so low on price), yet there is a proportion of your audience who are out to get the lowest premium at all costs, then certain, more pragmatic creative should be tested to see how different key messages are received.

Consumers may lie to get the best deal...

Identifying any opportunity based on the behaviour and mindset of the consumer during their ’shopping’ phase is key to maximising return from a search campaign. So if you are an insurer, or indeed any kind of financial institution, you should certainly take the ABI’s findings into account when developing strategy. And equally, the emergence of a more cynical searcher should inform your keyword development - could negative(in the truest sense of the word) searches  be on the increase as a whole? How wide does this go and how far are consumers prepared to go to get the ‘best deal’?

It’s a shame that the ABI’s line of ‘honesty is the best policy’ is actually publicising (and, therefore, to a certain extent promoting) lying on insurance forms. And the BBC highlighting the lack of convictions (which is an obvious and fair point to make) easily overshadows any kind of ABI-encouraged moral responsibility the consumer should have.

So don’t forget, as you develop search strategy based on the economic downturn and a belt-tightening 2009, people are cynical, tactics will be employed by them to save money, the way people search will change. And for all our expectations, forecasts and assumptions, search trends will raise eyebrows…it’s just a question of how high they’re raised, and how often…

The ease of online shopping has shaped the way consumers prepare for the festive season. With competitive offers, gift wrapping and free delivery online now offers that ‘perfect’ gift and has resolved that age old question of “what to buy?”. But has the effortlessness of a ‘click and buy’ generation misplaced the heart and warmth behind venturing into the real world and looking for that perfect gift?

Google Insights shows that searches for ‘Christmas gifts’ have reached unprecedented heights when compared to last year in addition to which searches for ‘personalised Christmas gifts’ have increased by 40%. Online advertisers this year are capitalising on this shift in consumer wants and needs, we no longer need just a gift but want that gift to evoke a feeling.

This holiday season John Lewis have successfully run advertising campaigns on and offline encouraging consumers to ‘find the perfect present’. With the option to shop by recipient we can now be inspired with the knowledge that if we choose to buy we are choosing an ideal gift. Similarly, Comet have now changed their slogan to reflect this shift from ‘we live electricals’ to ‘we deal in your ideal’.

To overworked, time poor consumers online shopping has provided the opportunity to not only find a gift but discover ‘the’ perfect gift for their loved ones this Christmas. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues into 2009 reflecting the change of consumer mindset or if this is just a way for retailers to get around ‘Crunchmas’…

Online aggregators now play an integral part in the media mix and for the most part, they are here to stay. The rise of the aggregator has many different implications on the insurance market and companies are adjusting their marketing to include presence of the likes of Moneysupermarket, Confused.com and GoCompare. Cheeze have put together an insight piece on the implications of online aggregators as the client demand for this media grows.

The presentation looks into the reasons why aggregators are so popular and the many different ways a client can feature their brands on the sites. Volume is perhaps the biggest benefit for including aggregators on your media plan but we also examine the aspects of Brand, Accountability and Control. There are both positives and negatives for building aggregator relationships and the future is somewhat of an uncertain one. In the short term how can clients afford to miss out on 2.7million unique users? But just how long can aggregators continue to prosper is a conversation worthy of another post.

This deck was prepared by Jenny Eaves, Group Account Director and Zoe Mason, Senior Media Account Manager who look after clients including AXA and PDSA Pet Insurance. Our work on aggregators helps achieve profitable insurance policy sales for our clients as part of a wider digital marketing mix. You can read more about our work with aggregators here.

I am presenting at two conferences in the next fortnight. First I will be attending Infoline’s “Examining Developments in General Insurance Distribution” conference to discuss the rise of aggregators like MoneySupermarket and their potential impact on the insurance industry. A copy of the presentation will be published on the blog on Thursday.

Next week sees me in Budapest at the Golden Dove Conference.I will be presenting on the rise of social networks across Europe, looking at the brand opportunities for working with, or creating their own social networks. Again, this presentation will be online after the conference.

Should be fun