Summary: It's an interesting
marketing dilemma. You have an icon with an incredible 85% brand
awareness, but folks don't really know what your business is. The new
chief marketing officer plans on reducing the visibility of the famous Aflac
duck.
New CMO Plans to Clip the Aflac Duck's
Wings
Wants Less Visible, Less Audible Brand Mascot
By Lisa Sanders
February 19, 2007
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) --
Jeff Herbert has a marketing problem. Everyone knows his advertising icon, but
he believes most consumers don't know what it sells. So he intends to clip the
Aflac duck's wings.
85% brand awareness
You might think any chief marketing officer would be grateful to inherit the
annoying avian, who has landed the brand phenomenal 85% brand awareness in the
past five years. In that time, it's waddled its way into pop culture, with a
cameo role in a feature film, "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events"
and figuratively shared "The Tonight Show" couch with Ben Affleck in 2003, when
the actor decried being chased by girls screeching the fowl's famous line.
("That duck is goin' down," Mr. Affleck proclaimed.)
But Mr. Herbert, the company's first CMO and a classically trained package-goods
marketer, plans to make the duck, created by Kaplan Thaler Group, New York, less
visible (and, thankfully, less audible). His plan is to focus more marketing on
what Aflac does-supplemental insurance-while expanding its offerings and growing
the category.
"Our industry is a difficult one for the average consumer to understand," Mr.
Herbert said. "We want to move our brand from being known to owned." And that
means new creative, new products and a rethinking of the media plan.
$14.6 billion in sales
Aflac had sales of $14.6 billion in 2006 but generates 75% of its $1.5
billion earnings in Japan. In the U.S., it is the market leader, with 6% share;
however, supplemental insurance itself accounts for only 9% of the total
insurance category. "Beginning in the early 2000s, the company benefited from an
underpenetrated market and the love of the duck," said David Lewis, senior
insurance analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. So while Aflac's share today is
at least twice the size of its No. 2 competitor, Unum Provident's Colonial Life
& Accident, there's a lot of room for growth.
But there's also a looming competitive threat as entrants seize on opportunities
arising from employers shifting a greater portion of health-care costs to
employees, in turn generating a greater need for supplemental insurance.
So Aflac is goosing its budget -- Mr. Herbert won't say by how much -- and
directing that fatter funding to messages directed at specific target groups. "I
see a huge opportunity for us in business-to-business," he said. He's also
earmarked additional funds to reach the Hispanic and possibly African-American
markets.
Changing media buying patterns
With less reliance on the duck, Aflac will also rely less on his primary
medium. "Because of the nature of our awareness vehicle, a duck, in order to
hear him, the most prominent vehicle was TV," Mr. Herbert said. "Now we think
that we have awareness and we can buy media differently."
So while most of the insurer's $75 million in measured media last year was spent
on TV, according to TNS Media Intelligence, this year the insurer will load up
on outdoor, print and other media. Fitzgerald & Co., Atlanta, handles media
buying for Aflac.
To carry out his strategy, Mr. Herbert also has reorganized Aflac's 200-person
marketing group into seven key areas, including product marketing, marketing
services, channel marketing and strategic planning, creating what the Kraft,
Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola Co. and Zyman Group veteran calls a
"consumer-products/financial-services" hybrid. He's also recruiting additional
talent-"people with backgrounds similar to my own," he said.
Not without possible pitfalls
Though it sounds as if it will fly, the plan isn't without pitfalls, said
Andrew Pierce, senior partner at marketing consultancy Prophet. Marketing best
practices generally come from package-goods companies, but transferring them to
a financial-services firm can be difficult. Financial-services firms often have
difficulty attracting top marketing talent, he said, since selling annuities or
other products lacks the sizzle of a Pepsi or Heineken.
Then there's another issue: "Financial products aren't impulse buys like buying
soap or cookies," Mr. Pierce said. Sales happen at many points, whether with a
sales agent or a human-resources executive; consumer loyalty depends on customer
service. "There are a lot of different touch points," Mr. Pierce said. "Some of
the consumer-package-goods rules apply, but not all."
