Playing to the Stereotype: Four Insurance Branding Lessons from the New Jersey Governor
April 10, 2012 by Charles Wasilewski · 5 Comments
From modest beginnings in New Jersey, a larger-than-life politician has emerged onto the national stage: Governor Chris Christie. And he’s brought along branding experiences that apply to insurance.
Christie was criticized by opponents as an underqualified political appointee and a legal lightweight when he was nominated by President George W. Bush to the post of U.S. Attorney for the State of New Jersey. During Christie’s tenure from 2002 through 2008, the U.S. Attorney’s office won convictions or pleas of guilty from 130 public officials (state, county and local), both Democratic and Republican — without losing a single case.
The Myth of 24/7
January 24, 2012 by Rick Morgan · 2 Comments
When I speak with insurance agents and brokers, I hear a common belief that in today’s world, 24/7 availability is required to be competitive. And who can blame them? In our instant gratification society there is an expectation that consumers want full access to all information whenever they want it.
But what exactly does “24/7” mean and is it really necessary?
If you believe the argument that auto insurance is a commodity, then the 24/7 expectation is justified. Yet, what your customers are buying from you, the agent, is more than a quote or a policy—they also are getting a personalized service built on a trusted relationship. Perhaps geckos don’t sleep but living, breathing insurance agents need their rest. Read more
Tebow This: Does Your Brand’s Muscle Memory Need Changing?
January 10, 2012 by Charles Wasilewski · 2 Comments
Tim Tebow was the biggest brand in college football just three years ago. During a career at the University of Florida from 2006-9, he set records in career passing efficiency and total rushing touchdowns in the Southeastern Conference (considered by many football fans to be the most competitive conference in the country).
Tebow’s teams sported a 48-7 record during his four-year career and won two national championships. He won the Heisman Trophy, emblematic of college football’s best player, in 2007, when he became the first college football player to both rush and pass for 20 or more touchdowns in a single season.
Now, Tebow is among the biggest brands in professional football, in just his second National Football League season. His number 15 Denver Broncos jersey is the largest-selling among all NFL players. Last weekend, he threw a game-winning touchdown pass in the first play of overtime to capture Denver’s first playoff victory in six years — spawning a record 9,420 tweets per second, according to Twitter.
But the two Tim Tebows are totally different brands, even though both have been successful.
So, what would one of the most-successful college quarterbacks of all time even need or want to change? Read more
True Name Grit
May 31, 2011 by Charles Wasilewski · Leave a Comment
With the summer kickoff of movie season this past Memorial Day weekend, I thought back to a recent movie I enjoyed. In the 2011 remake of Western film True Grit, 14-year-old heroine Mattie Ross hires rough-hewn U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn to hunt down and bring to justice Tom Chaney, her father’s killer. Cogburn is an “aging, one-eyed, overweight, trigger-happy, hard-drinking man.” But to Ross, he’s the right man to ride out onto dangerous ground and find the elusive Chaney, who has a head start fleeing across the river from Arkansas into Indian Territory (now the state of Oklahoma).
Rooster has “grit” (Ross’s word), even if he’s time-beaten, weather-worn and (in actor Jeff Bridges’s take) has a muffled, mouth-chewing way of speech.
The girl heroine insists on coming along, so Rooster and Ross ride out on the range, encountering dead bodies, outlaws, rattlesnakes and other hazards. [Plot spoiler: Rooster tracks and kills his quarry (with help from a Matt Damon-acted Texas Ranger who has his own reasons for hunting down the villianous Tom Chaney). Mattie Ross gets her justice.]
I’m not a movie buff nor a Western fan, but this well-done movie led me to reflect on naming and insurance brand tagline projects we’ve been working on here at Aartrijk: Read more
A Rose By Any Other Name
April 19, 2011 by Maureen Wall Bentley · Leave a Comment
It sounded like a joke: “You know that CARFAX won’t fax you a report any more?”
But it wasn’t a joke. Though CARFAX indeed has “fax” in its name, the company today distributes its used-vehicle reports only through online access. But that gap between identity and reality doesn’t seem to have hurt the company, which, with more than 8 billion records in its database, is one of the top Web sites for vehicle research.
But that disparity got me thinking about other brand identities that no longer deliver on their name, logo or tagline, and whether or not it matters. Read more
Call for Action
March 15, 2011 by Charles Wasilewski · 1 Comment
“Call for action! GReenwood 7-5-3-1-2!”
I still remember the radio ad jingle. Growing up in central New Jersey and raised on AM radio, I repeatedly heard this commercial for a Philadelphia newspaper, which featured a consumer hotline dubbed “Call For Action!” (Using a word like “GReenwood” in the phone number followed by the numbers was a trick for making telephone numbers memorable.)
In those days of the 1960s and 1970s, lemon laws were not yet on the books, malls were just being invented, and the “vigilante consumer” (more on that term later) was a slumbering giant. So the local newspaper had a consumer action helpline where people could call if they had a problem with a consumer product or service. The Star-Ledger, a newspaper in New Jersey, recently reintroduced a similar column. Read more







“It’s like a gift card in a big store.”