Insurance Marketing
Change Agents

• Lori Chordas
• April 2020
• 

Evolving customer needs are driving big changes and disruption in the insurance market and opening the door for marketers to engage with customers in different ways.

“We need to be thinking about those changes five, 10, 15 years from now. That's our role as marketers, to help the business see around the corners and stay ahead of changing customer expectations,” said Robyn Hahn, president of small business at Westfield. Hahn, the former chief marketing officer of the Ohio-based insurer, participated in a Feb. 28 webinar sponsored by AM Best and the Insurance Marketing and Communications Association.

Following in an edited transcript of the interview.

What do insurance marketers need to know and do to earn value and respect within their organizations?

Early on, I realized that I had a choice to allow myself to be relegated to being viewed as optional when it came to having a seat at the table, or figuring out how to be viewed as a trusted adviser and almost needed or required to be at the table in order for progress to be made. I chose to lead people there through self-discovery and did that through a focus on five key areas: Learn the business, let the business co-develop and be a part of your engagements, make real-time connections a priority, figure out the critical relationships and focus on emotional intelligence.

Westfield recently underwent a brand refresh. What was the rationale for taking the word “insurance” out of its name?

We did that to redefine who we needed to be and how to present ourselves in order to stay relevant with customer expectations.

Through our research, we determined that we needed to broaden the definition of risk and come at it from a customer's point of view. We do business with folks that take on more risk than just the nature of risk transfer and the casualty, property and liability spaces. We know that we're able to offer more.

It was a pretty big, bold move. We made a statement with it to our employees, agents and customers, but it illustrates the kind of company that we want to be, which is being a relevant voice in our customers' conversations and a valuable part of their lives.

How can marketing successfully work with other business units and evolve small business at Westfield?

It starts with the competitive business strategy, and having marketing understand how we intend to compete and what the business outcomes are that we're trying to drive. We view business and brand strategy as two sides of the same coin. They inform and push on each other. They learn from each other. That's how you bring a business strategy to life because a brand, strategy, communications and materials are about how you express your strategy to the marketplace in a way that they understand.