Thorp & Company recently worked with McKenna & Associates, a healthcare reinsurance brokerage firm, to develop its brand and to later transfer its brand equity to Aon Healthcare Insurance Services, a new subsidiary of Aon Corporation, which acquired McKenna & Associates.
“Branding is the heart of a business because it’s about who you are and how you’re recognized,” said Robert Trinka, vice president of Aon Healthcare Insurance Services. “Few companies succeed at branding because executives try to brand their company’s name as opposed to branding their company’s identity. Many companies fail to get to the first step, which is defining their true identity, so they don’t really know what to brand.”
When Aon, a Fortune 500 company with a wide footprint in the insurance industry, was poised to acquire McKenna & Associates, the challenge was to transfer McKenna & Associates’ brand equity to Aon without losing what had taken years to build.
“We had a strong, well-respected reputation, and we didn’t want to see our ‘McKenna & Associates’ identity get totally lost in the marketplace because of the Aon acquisition,” Trinka said.
Thorp & Company knew the reinsurance market inside and out, having created successful public-relations programs for McKenna & Associates and John Alden’s reinsurance division. The firm worked with national and healthcare media on a daily basis and had made a household name of McKenna & Associates in the healthcare reinsurance category. Thorp & Company also had generated more than $30 million in qualified leads for John Alden.
For Aon, Thorp & Company implemented a top-to-bottom program that touched most points on the marketing spectrum. At the heart of the effort was a national re-branding campaign that showcased the firm’s varied skills, including the writing and production of collateral materials, the design of a new tradeshow booth, the coordination of speaking opportunities for key executives, and work with healthcare media to increase awareness of Aon and its healthcare product offerings.
“Thorp & Company did an outstanding job of shifting the McKenna loyalty and recognition to Aon,” Trinka said. “We created a lot of buzz in the marketplace, and Thorp & Company’s efforts helped to establish the new Aon subsidiary, Aon Healthcare Insurance Services, as a national leader in healthcare brokerage services as well as generated numerous sales leads. Thorp & Company’s work was the centerpiece of our branding strategy.”
Trinka offers company executives the following tips about branding:
- Focus groups, strategic planning and other marketing activities, while important, simply aren’t enough. A company must do some soul-searching and truly understand what it is, what it does, whom it wants to serve and how it wants to be known.
- Company executives should make it a priority for everyone on their staff to fully understand and be committed to the branding program and execute it consistently with the brand.
- Successful branding campaigns involve the right mix of marketing, public relations and advertising. Entrust this process to a professional and “don’t try this at home.”
- The media play a major role in shaping brands, so company executives should always be actively involved in public-relations efforts. They shouldn’t only initiate public-relations campaigns after a crisis has hit their company and reporters start calling. They should make public relations an everyday priority.
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