Briefing: Confidence men and women – and the industry’s missing marketing narrative

One line always stood out for me in the landmark BBC series documentary series Civilisation by Kenneth Clark.

In it, he suggested that confidence was, at least for him, the essential ingredient by which societies build, invest and ultimately progress.

It’s a deceptively simple idea, one that only the truly bright and learned could so readily crystallise. Essentially, before the aqueduct or cathedral was built, someone had to believe tomorrow would be sufficiently orderly to make today’s risk worthwhile.

And that important search for confidence is where insurance comes in as one of the great unloved capitalist tools that helps inspire that confidence.

It’s not the only one, obviously. Capital, law, property rights, contract enforcement, an absence of marauding armies and, dare I say, even regulation all help.

But insurance specifically performs an essential task in allowing people to act without bearing the full risk of ruin on their own balance sheet.

For families, that means the misers in the credit department will loan them a mortgage as the asset is insured. For businesses, it provides that indemnification blanket that enables them to perform their commercial activities with confidence.

A perfect story

So far, so honourable. And, this noble role ought to be a marketing department’s dream.

As an industry, we are the great enablers. Trade, enterprise and construction – none of it could take place without that protection working in the background and the assurance that it provides.

And similarly, for the personal, we pay for the rebuilding and repairing of homes. We ultimately ensure that mankind’s usual bedfellows in terms of misery – the fire, flood, accident, theft, injury and all the other indignities that human beings have long endured – are made into tolerable risks that won’t send one to the poor house.

But ask the average person what they think of insurance and you are likely to be met with indifference or suspicion – usually variations on the old “you’ll take my premiums, but try and find a way to wiggle out of paying the claim”.

This contibutes to the industry being shrouded in a negativity cloak, driven by a combination of factors – from the psychological aspects of how it forces proposers to confront negative life events or potential financial disasters, to the low enthusiasm for what is an intangible promise based on a promissory note of future protection. The final insult is often when another year of no claims becomes a year in which the premium paid buys nothing of recoverable benefit and seemingly greedy insurers have won once again.

Part of the problem is that our competence is largely invisible. When we do our job well, nothing appears to happen and this then feeds the marketing problem for insurance generally, exactly because much of this value is hidden.

The more strategic benefits of insurance are often overlooked and, consequently, it is underappreciated for its enabling properties. Instead, the industry is arguably reduced to the prosaic, becoming a matter of dull competence, with the focus on its technical conduct limiting the beneficial narrative and subsequent marketing opportunities that could foster greater avenues for promoting the good the industry does.

Paradoxical problems

I’ve provisionally called this ‘the insurance competence-salience paradox.’ Basically, the better we are at creating a smooth safety net, the less visible the net becomes. Ironically, competence suppresses its own evidence or salience to customers.

The industry then compounds the problem by behaving exactly as everyone expects us to behave. We are cautious, formal, technical and use the language of regulators, lawyers and actuaries.

Some of that is necessary, for no sensible customer wants their insurer to behave like a spivvy salesperson. Regulation and custom enforce seriousness and we’re best off always highlighting that, as opposed to the opposite.

But our conservatism has a cost and, I believe, it robs us of a potential beneficial narrative arc.

Personally, I feel that we have allowed ourselves to be known for our process, rather than for our purpose.

Meanwhile, the potentially larger story is sitting there untouched. Insurance is not merely a grudge purchase – it is actually the great enabler for us to build, ship, hire, innovate, lend, travel, recover when a claim arises and, ultimately, try again.

And this is where our marketing as an industry is found wanting. We either frighten people with peril, bore them with technical jargon or distract them with animals – meerkats specifically.

But if the greatest story we can tell about one of capitalism’s essential confidence machines is a cartoon mascot and a discount reminder, we may have undersold ourselves slightly.

The bolder argument is that insurance should market enablement. The messages and narratives should really be centred around how “we make risk possible,” or “we help businesses dare to dream,” and “we pay when life goes wrong.”

Because ultimately, we do actually pay. Not every claim and not always without reasonable doubt and enquiries. But, overwhelmingly, the industry exists to honour its promise. When it does, it is often met not with gratitude but relief, and relief is yet another potentially poor publicist for the industry.

Insurance has built an ecosystem of competence across its various disciplines and the people behind it, who collectively turn fear of loss into a financeable protective instrument. It works more often than we are given credit for and certainly far more often than public suspicion allows.

The industry does not need to become too self-important or righteous and we do, after all, have decent market penetration. But we do need a more purposeful narrative arc than simple price.

As Clark’s point goes, given societies thrive when they believe in themselves, then insurance deserves a better place in that story. It’s up to us to tell it and shape the public’s perception accordingly.

And that, frankly, is a rather good story – and we should have the confidence to shout about it.