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.

Clearly, mobile, social, and Internet technologies have created more channels to reach the consumer and for the consumer to reach you. Whether it is high noon, midnight or a weekend, 24/7 capabilities have made predicting when a customer will want access more difficult than ever—and added a level of expectation that for most agents is impossible to achieve. Rather than getting pulled into the 24/7 games of the online and direct carriers, use these technologies to amplify the unique value you offer as an independent agent. Use those technologies to build a strong online brand personality and engage with your community.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that you don’t need to have “after hours” emergency contact numbers and a website with some self-service options. Just don’t lose sight of the fact that your customers are doing business with you because they value your expertise and have access to you and your advice and guidance in time of need. I think your customers value that more then being able to “shop” insurance at 2 a.m.

What’s your take and how are you using the new technologies to strengthen your brand?

Tim Tebow, Denver Broncos starting quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner -- and rebranding lesson

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?

The answer: Because.

Tebow’s lifelong ambition was to play in the NFL as a quarterback. Not so easy, despite all the accolades: Many pro scouts considered his throwing motion (where he drew the ball back to his waist, rather than his shoulder, before throwing) to be unsuited for the NFL. Mel Kiper Jr., an ESPN pro football scouting analyst, was quoted as saying: “I don’t think he can be a full-time quarterback.” Given his relatively large size for a QB and his ability to run the football out of the shotgun formation, Tebow was labeled a running quarterback — faint praise and to many a way of saying he didn’t have what it took to succeed in an NFL offense.

Tim Tebow had a track record to think he was good enough. But he took it on himself to change. In a recent documentary about his preparation for the 2010 NFL draft, Tebow said:

“What we wanted to work on with my throwing motion was, really, get the loop out of it. Make it as quick as possible.”

Tebow’s goal became to change his muscle memory (a specific motor task put into memory through repetition) in order to show professional scouts that he was ready for the NFL. He needed to get his body to routinely make a different throwing motion, after four highly successful years in college. It took this elite athlete several coaches and about three weeks of 12-hour training days to change. Noted one of his coaches: “It’s going to take … 2,000 to 3,000 times doing something before you start to ingrain it in your muscles.”

Evidently, he changed enough: Tebow was selected by the Denver Broncos with the 25th pick in the first round in the 2010 NFL draft, and led his team to the NFL playoffs after the most recent 2011 season while leading fourth-quarter rallies for his team.

What lessons does Tim Tebow provide for you and your insurance brand?

1. Sometimes you need to change your brand because somebody else thinks so.
2. What you do well and what you need to improve both feed your brand.
3. Even the best at one level have to change to get to the next level. (A brand’s muscle memory might be doing something because it’s successful, but that doesn’t mean it will be effective in the future.)
4. Forgetting what you did before, and changing to something new, is difficult. It takes time and toil.
5. It can take a purposeful and sustained effort to create a new routine and a different environment.

Question: What do you think needs changing in good insurance brands?

UPDATE: See a story in American Agent and Broker about insurance industry spokespersons.

– traditional children’s song

Those who don’t get to Grandmother’s house by horse and sleigh (or airplane, bus, car, or train) are now traveling there via Facebook. They’re going to all kinds of places on the social networking site.

Facebook.com was the most-visited web site on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2009, and on New Year’s Day 2010, according to data reported by Experian Hitwise. “Facebook” was also the most-searched word in 2010, according to the firm’s most recent statistics.

What does this mean for insurance brands? If the people are there, shouldn’t the insurance brands be there too? Maybe brand decision-makers can use:

– Ads and content to the theme of “Safe travels and secure home brought to you by [carrier name / agency name].”

– Facebook postings of blog content about holiday safety tips, an evergreen (pun intended) topic for TrustedChoice.com and others.

– Reminders about claims service numbers and tips in case of a home mishap or car accident around the holidays.

Researching this blog post, I came to learn that this song, which I’ve always associated with Christmas visits, is actually a Thanksgiving song by Lydia Maria Child published in 1844 written originally as a poem. The poem, titled “A Boy’s Thanksgiving Day,” is based on her childhood memories and mentions visiting her “Grandfather’s” house. I always recalled the lyric as “Grandmother’s house,” not “Grandfather’s.” The author was a novelist, journalist and teacher who wrote extensively about the need to eliminate slavery, according to Wikipedia.

Question: What good social networking content do you use (or see insurance brands using) around the holiday season?

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

Recently a client made that statement at the conclusion of a discussion about a new branding initiative for his insurance firm. The client was delighted about having a range of choices in the creative materials we had developed. But he also was a bit torn and forlorn about having to only choose one approach from more than one choice.

Ah, there’s the rub, as Shakespeare once said.

With a marketing budget, or any budget for that matter, insurance brands need to make choices. Examples of some of the age-old choices are:

• Should I develop an email campaign to put my brand back in touch with those new contacts that stopped by the trade show booth recently? Or should I spend the budget to reach out to make a follow-up phone call to prospects we met last year?
• Is it a better idea to write up and design a case study or white paper to send to prospects, or to create a new ad campaign?
• And so on.

In 1960 (around about the time of the setting of the current TV hit MadMen) Jerome McCarthey presented the idea of the “4 Ps” to the marketing world: product, price, place, promotion. Philip Kotler later talked about making marketing decisions in the context of the “4 Cs” of the marketing mix:

• Product = Customer Benefits
• Price = Cost to Customer
• Place = Convenience
• Promotion = Communications

Insurance brands today have another wrinkle in their marketing decision-making. Whether you want to call it a “P” (for personalization or personal contact) or “C” (contact or customer contact or customization), the social Web gives marketers a chance to interact more personally, one-on-one, with prospects and clients. The social web is a new “place” (in McCarthey’s terminology) or a new “convenient” location to meet (in Kotler’s terminology). It’s in the mix.

How do you see insurance brands spending their gift cards, in light of the new choices the social Web provides?

Today more than ever brand is being defined by consumers and what they think is more important or has more influence than your brand messaging. Interestingly enough, even if you are not engaged in social networking it is having an impact on your brand. In fact, not engaging in social networking may be doing great harm to your brand.

When you search for a business on Google are you more likely to click on and follow-up if the business has a website link? What impression are you leaving with potential customers if they can’t find you on Linkedin or if your profile is poorly done and incomplete? If Facebook and other social sites have replaced the yellow pages, what damage to your brand is taking place if you can’t be found? How do you think consumers feel about an inactive Twitter account or a Facebook page that has not been updated for several months?

Social networking is not a project. Rather, it is about being a social business and has a great deal to say about who you are and what you do.

Are you using the new tools of social networking to help position your brand in a positive way?

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:

While not as hazardous nor as heroic as bounty hunting in the Old West, naming something has its own risks and rewards. And the processes have similarities.

Names, whether insurance product names or company names, are a key element of a brand. They can evoke and/or describe what an insurance firm has to offer. They can create an association or understanding of an insurance solution in the mind of a prospect or client. They can give rise to pride and inspiration among employees. They can be a shortcut that helps people find a brand again when they need it.

And seeking out a new product or brand name requires doing things that are out of the ordinary. It also requires (as does a movie plot) the suspension of disbelief and the willingness to wait out the twists and turns.

When insurance decision-makers hire Aartrijk for a naming project, like the young and strong Mattie Ross they are almost always looking for something they can’t find on their own. They’re looking for someone who is distinctly different from themselves but trustworthy. They want someone who’s been into the territory before. And when they ride along they’ll face a scare or two, and things won’t always seem to be working out.

Finding or creating a new name for an insurance product or brand has elements of a Western novel or movie: There’s a relentless quest. There’s adventure. And the journey gets dicey.

But finding the right name can be one of the most satisfying and inspiring things a brand decision-maker can ever do. To the Mattie Ross-like heroes and heroines who trust us: Thanks. We did it together.

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.

Immediately I thought of AARP, which a few years ago formally adopted its acronym and dropped American Association of Retired Persons because, among other reasons, its members are not all retired. That change was controversial, mainly because A-A-R-P isn’t the easiest moniker to roll off the tongue. But this over-50 lobbying operation remains a dominant force on Capitol Hill, and it is a major source for products and services coveted by aging Boomers.

And then there’s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which hasn’t changed its name, even though most African Americans today recoil at the phrase “colored people.” While the organization remains a civil rights leader, its name does hinder its ability to position itself as truly contemporary, as if its best days are behind it.

On a lighter note, there’s UPS, which for much of its 103-year history used a logo with a package wrapped in paper and string. But by the 21st century the delivery service had expanded its business model considerably, so in 2003 it changed its logo, losing the package icon. And not a moment too soon: UPS no longer accepts packages wrapped in string, because they get caught in its machinery.

Then there’s 7-11, the name of which originally indicated the hours of operation, though most stores are now open all the time.

Creating a brand identity is a fun, creative endeavor, but also a lot of work. There are seemingly endless criteria involved (trademark and URL availability just to start), and there usually are personal preferences thrown into the mix as as well. But, unless your organization has money to burn, pay careful attention to the shelf life of any name, logo or tagline you develop. Think through not only who you are today—your offering, your customer or member, your geographic reach, the manner in which you distribute your products and services—and consider where you might want to go tomorrow, or 25 years from now.

After all, a great identity should help define you, not limit you.

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.The way it worked was: The reader called to describe their problem. The newspaper would then contact the business/professional with which the consumer was having a problem and ask for a better resolution for the consumer. The motivating factor often was that the newspaper would state that it was going to cover the situation in its “Action Line” weekly newspaper column.

Guess what happened? Results.

I recalled this catchy jingle the other week when I was disappointed in the performance of a consumer product (replacement windows) in my home. I called the store where we bought the windows, was told to phone a service number, and was informed that parts were still under warranty after seven years but labor was not. To replace the warranted parts on the window would cost $120 per hour in labor. (This is after we paid more than twice that per window.)

At that moment, recalling the thousands of dollars spent for the windows, I was irritated that I would have to spend $120 minimum (prepaid by credit card, of course, before the window manufacturer would schedule a technician’s service call) to fix a few window gaskets.

This consumer wanted to lash out and let a few people know not to buy this brand of windows.

I’m not proud of that. But I’m guessing many people have felt this surge of consumer-ish anger at some point or another. Faith Popcorn, futurist, called people exhibiting this type of reaction the “vigilante consumer” (Popcorn’s definition: “The consumer manipulates marketers and the marketplace through pressure, protest and politics.”)

Today, unlike my childhood 1970s, I can lash out on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter or a blog or a replacement windows review site.

The question for insurance brands is: How will you handle this type of situation the next time it happens?

One of the people I admire most in social networking is insurance professional Nibby Priest, who from a Kentucky riverfront town Tweets and Yammers, gives us peeks into life, and mentions insurance now and again. When Nibby and I did an Insurance Journal Webcast for independent agents a couple years ago, an interesting question came up on this very topic. Here’s what we talked about:

“Question: In opening up your business to a Facebook fan page, you are obviously opening up your business to negative feedback. How do handle negative comments?

Nibby Priest: That’s a great question. Sometimes people don’t want to be a part of social media because they don’t want somebody to say something negative. You know bad things are not always bad; sometimes you need to know about them. So many times a client will leave you and you don’t even know what you did wrong. So, at least this gives an avenue and gives you, as business owners, the opportunity to go in there and correct it.

Social media is all about transparency. An example: Yesterday, Google messed up with Gmail. And what have they done today and late last night? They put out exactly what went wrong, what they learned from the experience, and they were transparent.

We need to listen to what clients have to say about us. So have I had any negative feedback? No. Can I get some? Yes. And whenever I do, I want to respond back positively and make a correction to it. That’s how I would handle it.”

When people call for action, how do you respond?

Why? Baby Boomer principals are looking to fund their retirements, benefits brokers are eager for P&C partners to relieve them of  the uncertainty of healthcare legislation and, quite simply, bigger fish are just eating smaller fish. Agents, brokers, companies, vendors…no one in our space is immune.  And among those left standing, there is a profound need to embrace their new family members and prove their relevance in a highly competitive marketplace. Add to that the number of organizations that simply need to shake off tired brand identities and touch points, and you’ve got a host of entities debuting new looks.

So, it should be no surprise that over the last two years Aartrijk has been involved in the rebranding of several industry organizations—providing brand research, naming, tagline and logo development, trademarking, rollout and sometimes all  of the above. And while every rebrand is inherently different, I’ve noticed a few common misperceptions and lessons learned. For those even considering rebranding, some words to the wise….A brand identity is not a brand. While this may be a given for some of you, I expect it will be a revelation to many others: Your brand is your reputation; your brand identity is the combination of your name, logo and tagline. A brand is something you earn, a brand identity is a way of expressing how you want to be viewed. A “rebrand,” therefore, creates a new identity in the hope of eventually influencing the reputation.

The research matters. The smartest path an organization can take when considering a new identity is the undertaking of some stakeholder research to better understand the current brand value—the aggregate feedback from your customers, employees, business partners and others who know you. If you don’t know where you are, it’s hard to plan where you’re going.

Committees are a double-edged sword. By nature I’m a loner, a social but introverted only child. So it may be counterintuitive that I like working with a branding task forces. Sure, creative-by-committee has its challenges, but getting input from your key constituents before your debut is waaaay better than hearing from them after your launch. (And you will hear from them, especially if they don’t like something.)

Give yourself time. While there can be value in launching a new identity at a major event or on a significant date, rushing to meet a false deadline can kill a half-baked rebrand. Give yourself time to get your employees onboard, to adequately vet the new name, to test the tagline or create the style guide. And with so many touch points to synchronize—Web site, collateral, press releases, signage, to name a few—avoid having them all finalized the same week. You only get one chance to debut, so make sure you’re ready to go, and give your team enough time to enjoy it.

A new brand identity can infuse an organization with energy and create buzz with stakeholders, and ultimately it should give you an opportunity to reinvent who you are and where you’re going. But remember that you still have to earn the brand itself.

The Driskill Hotel's marble floor features its 'D' logo

Walking in to The Driskill Hotel in Austin for Brand Camp 2010 in October, I admired the high ceilings, the 1880s southwestern architecture and the quick attention from the staff.

And the marble floors.

Like many distinctive hotels, The Driskill spends a lot of money on its floors. They’re marble, distinctly colored, and clean as can be. Placed in the middle of the floor in the center of the hotel’s meeting space is the hotel’s logo (see photo to the right).

The floors and the logo were easy to notice as I was walking from meeting room to lunch and back.

I bet consumers notice these same things about your brand. Except for an insurance agency, the ‘marble floor’ might be something different: Good service; a pleasant working relationship; fast quoting; the ability to diagnose and prescribe insurance prescriptions for risk management.

Do you strategically place your brand identity in the midst of your “marble floor”?

If you do, it’ll give people (prospects and customers) the chance to notice and remember your brand.