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Insurance Marketing
Marketing Matters

Nationwide’s Cathy Lanning discusses effective insurance marketing and how she and her team are leveraging the brand in new ways.
  • Lori Chordas
  • December 2019
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Cathy Lanning

Cathy Lanning


To raise brand awareness insurance marketers should experiment with new ideas and creative campaigns, said Cathy Lanning, senior vice president of property and casualty marketing at Nationwide. Lanning participated in an Oct. 25 webinar sponsored by AM Best and the Insurance Marketing and Communications Association.

Following is an edited transcript of the interview. 

What role does digital play in marketing and advertising?

We are really focused on new ways to support growth. We think about digital in the traditional sense, such as [search engine optimization], blogging, content marketing, paid search and more. We are focused on reaching customers and agents to drive awareness, consideration and policy yield. We utilize digital media to support retention and enriching experiences for current Nationwide members.

We are also using digital as an enablement tool, particularly with our agents to make their jobs easier, make it easier for them to keep promises to their policyholders, make it easier for them to write a policy, make it easier for them to reach prospects. 

Tell us about Nationwide's recent campaigns.

We are giving the Amazon Echo auto device away to new policyholders or existing policyholders that have a multiple policy commitment with us. We really like that campaign because it highlights the value of partnerships and Nationwide's digital focus.

One of my other favorite campaigns is something my team just wrapped up called Pitch to Win, which was focused on small-business owners and their struggles with finding infusions of capital.

We created a Shark Tank-like campaign where contestants submitted nominations for why they should earn up to $100,000 of infusion into their businesses.

The campaign had about 90 million media impressions. We had about 130,000 unique site visits to our business solution center.  

Nationwide has made a number of acquisitions. What is the branding strategy?

When we look back as recently as three to four years ago, we had a house of brands. All in all, we had 13 to 14 brands at one time. But we realized we have a lot of equity in the Nationwide logo and the jingle. We consolidated that house of brands to one branded house.

Today our logo is the “N” and eagle, which was utilized for many decades in the past. From 1999 to 2014 we made a shift in branding to a logo that we referred to as the “frame,” which was a Nationwide blue square that you may remember. Research showed the strong equity in the original “N” and eagle logo and our well-known jingle, so we made the successful decision to reintroduce our historical logo and leverage our audio branding with the jingle in new ways.

 

 


Lori Chordas is a senior associate editor. She can be reached at lori.chordas@ambest.com.



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