Enhancing brand consideration and market presence
Increasing brand consideration and market presence for a new insurance offering through media relations.
Challenge
Hong Kong’s insurance market is very competitive. FWD Insurance aimed to capture the Voluntary Health Insurance Scheme (VHIS) market share by significantly building their presence in the market and improving brand consideration, targeting health-conscious consumers, mass-affluent and high-income groups, families and a tech-savvy audience. Sinclair was bought on board to help strengthen the reputation of FWD’s VHIS products by emphasising the signature product features and benefits.
We were also tasked with maximising brand and product exposure across channels, especially in the lifestyle sector, by increasing consumer touch points to generate more new leads on FWD’s VHIS products.
Approach
Strategy: Identified communications priorities and formulated a strategic two-phased timeline to reach target audiences. Phase one focused on building reputation for FWD’s signature VHIS product – vCANsurance. Phase two differentiated FWD’s overall VHIS portfolio and key features.
Storytelling: Insurance is an “unseen unfelt” product. A “CAN” image was designed to present the product in a fun friendly way that audiences easily associate the visual with FWD’s VHIS product, thus strengthening brand recall.
Events: The new product was launched in a media event attended by 25+ media from business and entertainment sectors. To enhance credibility, celebrity ambassador Maggie Cheung was invited to share her personal recommendations about VHIS.
Executive Leadership: Shared insights with business media when the topic was relevant. Both spokesperson’s quotes, and FWD & market figures were prepared to ensure media interest.
Partnerships: Created additional touchpoints to reach non experts – the lifestyle consumers. Partnered with a local e-commerce platform Good Life, who shares the same brand values and similar target audience group, to launch ‘vCAN live a Good Life box’ to encourage customers to stay healthy and protected. A special FWD “can” product in the box was included to divert audience footfall to FWD’s lifestyle platform, FWD MAX.
Outcomes
- Earned reach of 80 million with over 260 articles achieved – 85 in tier 1 publications.
- 509% increase in social media engagement, benchmarked against average post engagement.
- Achieved a significant increase in VHIS sales - exceeding sales targets on vCANsurance by 710% and on VHIS medical insurance policy sales by 920%.
- Brand awareness increased by 4.5% year-on-year and brand consideration improved by 6.1% in the same period.
- Awarded Silver at Campaign Asia Pacific PR Awards Asia 2021 for Best Consumer Launch, Bronze at Marketing Interactive PR Awards Asia 2021 for Best PR Campaign – Finance and Insurance as well as Bronze for Best Launch/Rebranding.
