Brand Reconstruction

MMGs Indentity Gets a Face-Lift for the Future

By Janet E.H. Wright, ABC, APR

How well does your company brand work for you? Is it just a logo, or a real identity for your company, its products, its services, and its stakeholders? How well does your brand reflect what your company is about and its vision for the future?

More than two years ago, the management of MMG Insurance, Presque Isle, Maine, took a long, hard look and decided that the company’s brand no longer represented the company’s vision for the future.

“The decision was driven by the company’s desire to grow,” said Matt McHatten, senior vice president-external operations. “We decided to take a look at the way the brand was being delivered to agents, policyholders, and employees – our three stakeholders. We wanted to build a brand that would grow with MMG.

“Creating the new brand has been a big part of our life over the past two years,” he continued. “To do it right takes time.”

Focus groups set the tone

The decision was made to rebuild the brand image. Focus groups made up of agents, policyholders, and employees contributed to the new brand through their information and observations.

Agent and policyholder focus groups made up phase one. They were targeted specifically to find out what agents need to sell effectively and what customers want most in products and services. Not surprisingly, it quickly became apparent that agents remain the most effective media channel for putting the brand out.

Focus groups of employees were organized to determine their view of the company’s image. It was essential to determine employee buy-in of the same sense of image, pattern of excellent customer service, and basic way of doing business.

“We considered the elements agents and customers find valuable,” explained McHatten. “We were pleased that results showed a strong linkage between these elements and our primary operating philosophies.”

An MMG snapshot

MMG was founded in 1897, and has evolved significantly during the past 20 years via a focus on technology, expansion into auto and commercial lines, addition of new territories, and formation of a mutual holding company. Today, the company writes exclusively through independent agents in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Pennsylvania. Direct written premium for 2006 was just under $108 million.

“A primary focus is exceptional customer service,” said McHatten. “It is a vital part of all we do; it is a key component of our company’s mission.”

The company considers its marketing audience to be a combination of agents and customers. “As we have been developing our brand, we found several areas of improvement in terms of how we portray our value proposition better to agents and policyholders,” McHatten explained. “As a result, we have re-vamped the look of all materials, are exploring new ways of delivering co-op ad messages, and will be overhauling our approach to customer service.

“Northern New England and Pennsylvania are highly competitive. We are up against really fine mutual and regional companies, in addition to the stocks that have significant resources,” continued McHatten. “The mutuals and regionals have the added strength of being around as long as we have, and are very close to the marketplace. It all adds up to a need to stay focused and adapt quickly.”

The company’s public website has recently begun a transformation to add much more functionality with the intent of providing broadened service to policyholders. It is also being built to integrate the agent as part of the transaction. MaineGate, an agents-only site, has been in place for many years and contains significant functionality. The focus of that site continues to be process driven while providing ease of doing business to MMG’s agency partners.

McHatten reports that MMG does not do much mass media marketing. With that said, the company has been very active in a coalition of Northern New England companies by pooling resources to run ads on freezing, woodstove fires, loss prevention, and personal safety.

Making a good brain better

The company’s three-year vision includes a comprehensive marketing plan with annual action items.

Burgess Advertising, Portland, Maine, handled the process from start to finish, with conclusions along the way to the final product. The agency hired outside facilitators for the focus groups for unbiased involvement. In most groups, policyholders were mixed with non-policyholders, which provided significant insight. The agency also developed a new look for the company’s logo and graphic standards for all marketing material.

“We have cranked up our approach as a result,” said McHatten. “The marketing questions we ask now are: what’s valuable to the customer when buying insurance? How does the customer want to be serviced? What do our agents need, how do we make the servicing and selling work flow more efficient, and how can we help them succeed?

“Our new tag line is ‘Protecting Your Piece of the World,’” he continued. “We feel it assists in making our products tangible. We also really like the statement as it effectively answers the question of why buy insurance? You want to know the company will be there to protect you.”

From website to direct marketing and back again

“As hard as it was, we totally converted every phase of the company to our brand,” said McHatten. “Our inventory of forms had been managed well, and we jettisoned everything else [stationery, signage, etc.] that carried the old brand. You only see the new brand in everything from job posting ads to the website.”

And speaking of the website, “Through the focus groups, we learned important things about why policyholders would go to our website and the importance of easy navigation – something we needed to improve,” he explained. “Ultimately, you have to give people a reason to visit the site. It’s not appropriate to assume they’ll visit otherwise. As well, the empowered consumer of today values servicing on their terms and time schedule. Therefore, e-Commerce is becoming a bigger part of our collective brand.”

More work will be continued on the website in 2007. A vision is being built with ideas generated from a non-management committee. “We went in this direction to avoid bias many of us have about how to portray our brand on the internet. The results of their work are impressive and outside the box,” stated McHatten

Credit card payments are now available online. Future work will add more functionality, systematic marketing personalized to the policyholder, and careful management of email addresses. All work is being done in-house and in conjunction with agent feedback. McHatten expressed, “Two years ago, we had no dedicated personnel to e-Commerce. Today we have three programmers and a supervisor. It’s a big advantage in doing it in-house. As well, we continue to get excellent ideas from our agents. They continue to be very valuable in the process and we hope that our investments will improve their franchise as much as ours.

“We continue to survey several phases of our operation,” he continued. “Currently, we run a policyholder claims survey. We have also performed two policyholder surveys in the past in addition to the focus group effort. This information is valuable in monitoring our brand. The response is consistently far better than you would expect for this type of mailing. It’s very valuable feedback.”

McHatten feels that, most important of all, a good company marketing mindset extends far beyond management and the marketing department.

“We have a culture of marketing at MMG,” he explained. “Our success is based on a strong underwriting and claims staff, and we regularly receive accolades from agents and policyholders. Internally, it really extends to all departments. We’re really fortunate to have an employee base that strives to be the best consistently. Our people are the best representation of our brand.”

McHatten continued, “Our board has also been very supportive with the entire branding project. They also strongly encourage innovation and investment in making our foundation stronger.”

A message in every medium

The brand has been in place since Aug. 1, 2006. The company has had a strong positive response from all three audiences. No reaction testing has been done since then because “We did our due diligence prior to its introduction,” said McHatten.

“The bottom line is that you can have the greatest brand in the world,” he explained, “but if you don’t follow up with what stakeholders perceive as the answer to their needs, you won’t be successful. We must work hard everyday to back our brand up with action.

“We’ve found that a key element in branding is focus and a good foundation. It is very important to put a good plan in place and take your time. We make sure we execute the plan with all the things in mind that we’ve learned from our stakeholders. I never would have thought it would take such time and effort to do this, but it has been totally worth it.

“My advice to other companies wanting to change their brand is that you must be committed to doing it right. It can’t be done in two meetings. And you do need the help of an outside firm, if nothing else than to provide an objective view,” he added.

Is it working? MMG began doing business in Pennsylvania in December 2006. They also passed the $1 million milestone in Pennsylvania, and have been named one of the best places to work in Maine.

“We are very growth oriented,” said McHatten. “We have built a branding approach that should serve us well far into the future.”

Posted: Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:00:00 AM. Modified: Thursday, June 28, 2007 3:47:17 PM.

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