1. MARKET SITUATION

Working in and for an industry as static and defensive as the insurance business is not the prettiest task. It asks a lot of discipline, knowledge and courage to shake up conventions and understand the what and why of traditional communication. This case is the proof that no industry is too old to be relevant and no topic is too boring to be heard. It proofs that putting a category back where it belongs, in the 21st century, is the only way to stay relevant and make a difference. KBC catapulted its insurance business in the 21st century in one single movement. Business results skyrocketed. Perception changed drastically. And effects lasted. All with unchanged budgets and impact far beyond insurance.

2. OBJECTIFS

Insurances are not exciting, neither fun. And so is the market. Slow, mature and steady. Low annual growth, stable market shares. There is only so much insurance you can sell. And we sold a lot already. People don't wait in line to buy insurances. They are low involvement products. Very low involvement. Their sales highly depends on external stimuli, like car fairs in Q1, the real-estate market in Q2, travel and back-to-school in Q3. Q4 is never the best period, but in 2017 the situation was more dramatic. Q1 Q2 Q3 cumulative sales were 8% and 16% behind compared to the same period in 2015 and 2016. If nothing changed (a perfectly credible assumption on a stable market), KBC would have the worst end-of-year results in years.

The challenge was bold: can we still make up for a bad 2017 while three quarters of the year have passed already?

3. STRATEGY

The KBC-strategy was bold and promising. 'Bring on the future! served as a new brand baseline and a chance to pimp up the outdated image of KBC as a bank. What if the insurance business really lived up to this promise? What if we immersed the insurance business in modernity and relevance of the present? What if we gave the insurance business a decent make-over? A matter of dusting off, relooking and sharpening the image of the most boring industry in the world. Challenge accepted.

4. IMPLEMENTATION

The ambition was one thing, making the ambition true another. The make-over consisted of two important parts. First, proactivity. The campaign showed insurance situations that were out-of-the-ordinary. No broken vases, barbecues that catch fire or lost luggage to convince people to get yet another insurance. In this campaign, we only showcased topics, themes and situations that people didn't think of themselves. ''Have you thought of…? We have!'' become the core sentence of our campaign. Giving a whole new feeling of proactivity, modernity and peace of mind.

So what were those situations that we thought of (and people hadn't)? We selected two topics that concerned many people today and that were an answer to their concerns, questions and expectations. So second, relevant topics. No vases, barbeques and broken windows, just to be clear. #newfamilies was the first topic, building on the many one-parent families, satellite-parents and plus-kids of this world. #greentech was the second topic, based on the new way of living which is called energy consciousness, electrical mobility and solar consumption. Very fancy!

5. RESULTS

The make-over turned out to be a success. Sales more-than-made-up for a bad 2017. We outperformed Q4 sales with 70% on average compared to 2015-2016, good for EUR 3.2m of profit (per year!). Churn was 11% less than last years, preventing 1,523 clients to leave and good for a not-lost-business of EUR 228k per year (and even up to EUR 740k for large clients). Our perception changed drastically in the eyes of people. 11 and 12% improvement on indicators like "modernity, proactivity and innovation" and "being in synch with people's lives". Not bad for an industry where the average movement on perception (positive or negative) is around 3%.

If this was great, the best is yet to come. The insurance make-over had a positive impact beyond insurance. 21% of respondents thought the campaign changed their image of KBC as a bank, for the better. And the 11% reduced churn led to a not-lost-business of EUR 1.2m for the bank – since insurance products are anchorage product (a move to competition often means removing all banking products). And last but not least, a repetition of the campaign let to similar results in Q12018. All with unchanged marketing budgets. Conclusion: an impact beyond the bank and an impact beyond 2017. Bravo!

So yes, the make-over was the best thing we could have done for an old chap like insurance. Dust, dislike and irrelevance were replaced by relevance, freshness and new self-esteem.
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