In the complex world of insurance and reinsurance, a strong brand adds real value. By differentiating the business and building a culture that attracts and retains talent, a brand creates real competitive advantage.
Insurance and reinsurance firms are like many others in professional services, their services and, therefore, their brands are delivered by people. The perception of the brand and the reputation of the business is based on the people with whom clients interact. They can reinforce the brand or erode it. If your people are engaged with your brand, understand the business’s vision and strategy, espouse and live the values, then you have created a culture of success.
We believe in building brands that create value. Firms with a clear vision and strategy for the future and universally accepted values, articulated through a strong brand, build sustainable client relationships and a unique internal culture.
Branding is now a fundamental tool of business that over time, delivers real shareholder value. In “Corporate Culture and Performance,” Kotter and Heskett show that companies with strong adaptive cultures based on shared values outperformed other companies by a significant margin. Over an eleven-year period, companies that emphasised all stakeholders – employees, customers and stockholders, and focused on leadership development, grew four times faster than companies that did not. They also found that these companies had job creation rates seven times higher, had stock prices that grew twelve times faster and profit performance that was 750 times higher than companies that did not have shared values and adaptive cultures.
In “Built to Last,” Collins and Porras show that companies that consistently focused on building strong corporate cultures over a period of several decades outperformed companies that did not by a factor of 6 and outperformed the general stock market by a factor of 15.
Our “Perfect Fit” branding process involves researching and deconstructing the business to identify the vision and values that underpin it. Understanding how they currently align to the business strategy helps us to identify what lies at the heart of the organisation. We then reconstruct the brand around this essence, creating an articulation that can be understood and adopted at every level of the business. The result is a compelling brand that engages all audiences. An enduring brand with real competitive advantage that will create a lasting difference.
Our experience includes the re-branding of Benfield prior to IPO in June 2003, on-going brand stewardship including the identification and articulation of the Benfield values and the branding of the sub-brand Benfield Corporate Risk. In 2005 we also undertook the re-branding of Gallagher Re.
Our specialist team includes Richard Thomsett, Lead Consultant on both the Benfield and Gallagher Re branding projects, Sarah Bean who has been involved in brand stewardship in reinsurance for the last 6 years and Geoff Dodds, formally Head of Brand at Lloyd’s and now a Senior Consultant with Brand Architects.
