We’re real advocates of technology that provides a competitive edge for insurance brokers and whilst we may not always be convinced by every technology; occasionally we find a real winner. Our clever cousins across the Atlantic have been refining the way that the car insurance market operates. RSA spoke to their clients and asked them what bugged them the most about dealing with car insurance – they found that customers were sick of the annual round of getting quotes and then waiting for them all to come back before renewing or changing their policies.
Video in Print
Video in Print is a novel idea that comes from the American company Americhip. The idea is that instead of relying on the printed page to reach your target audience, you can instead embed a very thin screen in a page and develop adverts that quite literally talk to your customers. Better still you can also add interactive elements to those adverts and deliver touch sensitive screens where a customer can input data.
In fact Americhip can do a serious amount of cool stuff; with their campaigns they claim to have been the first to add audio and video to print. They also have the ability to make paper light up when touched using a blend of LED solutions. Better still they can add taste and scent to an advert. That’s right – taste. They’ve developed a tamper proof pouch that can hold something called a “taste strip” which allows you to deliver the exact taste of your product to the client – though we haven’t worked out what insurance would taste of yet; perhaps minty and refreshing?
Video in Print and RSA
RSA obviously liked the technology offered by Americhip a lot. They hired Ogilvy, the Tier 1 marketing and creative agency, to work with them to develop a campaign that would cut the hassle out of applying for insurance quotes and bring in more business.
They launched an ad (see below) that used an interactive touch screen in the form of a mobile phone that went into print publications across the US. The client could then enter their mobile and license plate details using a virtual keyboard in the advert. This was then transmitted from the page to a mobile server where RSA could process their data and immediately send out a quote to their mobile phones. In essence they deliver a personalized insurance quote from anywhere without even the need for internet access.
That’s seriously cool and we think it’s innovations in technology like this that the British insurance sector can get in touch with and use to boost their own revenue and retention models. After all there’s no reason that this concept couldn’t be extended to our home and auto insurance markets is there?
