As one of Canada’s largest insurance companies, RSA provides home, auto and commercial coverage to customers via multiple distribution channels. The most significant is through the insurer’s exclusive network of approximately 900 broker partners across Canada. RSA relies greatly on the ability of its broker partners to know and understand RSA products well enough to recommend them to the right customers, and to have enough confidence in the business to do so. RSA’s relationship with the broker channel is paramount to the success of the business.
RSA’s underwriting team had identified a gap in its product offerings in the speciality business relative to the competitive landscape – at the time, RSA didn’t provide a market-competitive policy for what’s known as a “Side A Difference-in-Conditions” for commercial clients. This policy protects the personal assets of executives and board members of a company if the company is faced with litigation and civil fines. With more stringent environmental regulations and more and more shareholders seeking to hold company executives to account, this form of coverage is rapidly becoming essential for even medium-size businesses. Market research, however, determined that many Canadian companies—particularly smaller manufacturing and resource extraction enterprises—were unaware of the need for this kind of coverage.
RSA launched Ironclad™ to meet this growing need in July 2016. Given the complexity of the product, the company needed to develop an identity for it that reinforced its role as the “last line of defence” for executives.
APEX worked closely with the broker marketing team at RSA Canada to complement the integrated marketing activity planned for the launch. The key campaign goal was to create a clear, direct identity for the product, and articulate the growing and important need served by RSA’s Ironclad™. We had to introduce brokers to both Side A Difference-in-Conditions policies in general and RSA’s Ironclad™ in particular, so that they felt confident enough to recommend it to their clients.
In addition to a range of digital and print ads in targeted publications, the integrated marketing team developed product sheets, FAQs and brochures for brokers and clients. Understanding that Ironclad™ is a complex product to describe to customers who didn’t know they needed it in the first place, a whiteboard explainer video was created for brokers to share with customers. The Ironclad™ page on rsabroker.ca generated 146, 624 page views, vs. 94,589 prior to the video being uploaded. The team also generated a range of earned and paid media impressions in broker publications such as Canadian Underwriter, Insurance Business and Top Broker. As well, given that RSA’s commercial team wanted to prioritize certain industries – such as manufacturing, construction and HR – for its sales outreach, APEX also secured coverage that profiled RSA’s thought leadership through the launch in vertical trade publications including PLANT magazine, Western Exteriors and Canadian HR Reporter. Despite the niche nature of RSA’s Ironclad™, the team was able to generate over 200,000 impressions as a result of the launch campaign media outreach.
For more information on APEX PR, visit www.APEXPR.com.