The UK has just introduced new bribery laws and one area that could fall foul of this,  is that of corporate entertainment.

Well certainly not in Germany, and especially if you work for Munich Re, one of the worlds largest reinsurance companies who threw an orgy in a spa baths complete with prostitutes for all its major clients and top staff, according to a report on Radio 5 of the BBC!

One of Munich Re’s divisions, Ergo, told the BBC that the party had taken place to reward salesmen in 2007.

A spokesman said the people who organised it had since left.

The gathering was held at a thermal baths in the Hungarian capital Budapest as a reward to particularly successful salesmen.

‘Whatever they liked’

There were about 100 guests and 20 prostitutes were hired. There was one prostitute for every five guests.

A German business newspaper said the prostitutes had worn colour-coded arm-bands designating their availability, and the women had their arms stamped after each service rendered.

According to Handelsblatt, quoting an unnamed participant, guests were able to take the women to four-poster beds at the spa “and do whatever they liked”.

“After each such encounter the women were stamped on the lower arm in order to keep track of how often each woman was frequented,” the paper quoted the man as saying.

“The women wore red and yellow wrist bands. One lot were hostesses, the others would fulfil your every wish.

“There were also women with white wrist bands. They were reserved for board members and the very best sales reps.”

A spokesman for Ergo told the BBC that the party had happened, but said it was not the usual way of rewarding their employees.

The company said it had introduced a new code of conduct.

“We’ve taken all the right steps to prevent it happening again,” he said. “It was a mistake but we are very sure that it was a unique event.

“The new people of the sales organisation introduced a very personal commitment that these things should not happen again.”

Insurance Blog does not suggest that you approach your marketing director in the morning………

To hear the full interview visit the BBC.

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This old advertisement for The London Assurance Company from the turn of 19th century suggests that insurance was something that you didn’t talk about in public – like money!

‘Very good people to deal with”  What’s all that about then?

Good at what? Deal with What?

“Good Day Mister. I’m from London Assurance. We’ll deal with it for you! (Cockney Accent required)

An interesting thing about the advert is the Firemark in the centre depicting the coat of arms of the Corporation of the City of London, The George Cross.

Also notice the EC4 address which is still very much an Insurance area of the City.

For those of you who don’t know what a fire mark is, a Firemark was a plaque that was placed on the exterior of a property in full public view to indicate to the privately owned fire brigades that the house was covered by home insurance and was worth saving.

If you didn’t have a firemark on your wall and your house caught fire – then it burnt!

Fortunately the days of proving you’ve got home insurance before the Fire Brigade will start putting out the fire, are long gone. Fire Marks though now very collectable, were the very first form of Insurance Marketing and advertising.

By the 1920′s advertising for Home Insurance and property insurance had moved on with the emphasis on courtesy, service and prompt settlement as this fascinating advert from the still existing Eagle Star Company, now part of the Zurich group demonstrates.

Hmm…. It still took them nearly 2 months to pay the claim!

I wonder how many of those words prompt settlement and service, you’ll see on price driven television insurance adverts or the Internet insurance marketing campaigns of today!

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AIG had to pull out their 14 million a year deal which ran until the end of May this year, after the company was bailed out by the US Treasury to keep it alive.

It’s been a bad week for AIG who failed to complete the sale of their Asian division AIA to the man from the Pru, as the Treasury ‘overvalued’ the operation at 24.5 billion.

It might not be such a big deal for Aon either who have reportedly paid 80 million to be in the Red and announced at the time that they shared a  desire for excellence and winning, based on tradition, integrity, teamwork and success.

Manchester United are no longer the force they were a year ago when the sponsorhip deal was cut.  The club could be said to be in crisis for their high standards. The aging team and manager failed to win a trophy last season  and were ignominiously dumped out of the European Champions League in the quarter finals.

The sale of Manchester United Shirts has dropped dramatically domestically with supporters favouring the green and yellow colours of the orignial club Newton Heath as a demonstration against the way that American owners the Glazer’s have assest stripped the once rich club.

With a lack of success the lucrative Asian shirt market will likely suffer too.

Hey maybe Aon should buy AIA!

Trying to buy success in the UK football market has so far only been achieved by the Russians!

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This caused an initial flurry of activity by prescient insurance companies and a few savvy brokers, who bit the bullet and jumped into Internet Insurance transactional business, prior to the dot-com boom.

The playing field was not so level and over the years it appeared to Insurance Blogger that the online marketing spend and efforts of powerful Insurance Companies and a few brokers, had skewed the playing field further, and Internet Insurance Marketing had become a mirror of the physical world where he who spends the most gets their brand seen. The situation has become exacerbated by the dominance of price comparison sites and premium aggregators as further barriers to a successful Internet Insurance Marketing campaign by a small insurance broker, for example.

Insurance Brokers have felt particularly left out of the new wealth, as on the whole, they do not have the marketing budgets to fight back against the established big boys.

However recently there has been a massive shift in the Insurance Marketing paradigm which is allowing ‘those in the know’ to not only compete with the big boys but to retake the marketing initative and establish online market dominance for their chosen niche markets!

So how have they done this?

Well everything has changed in the world of Insurance Marketing with the arrival of Social Media Marketing. It appears it is no longer a question of buying attention for your brand by spending large amounts of cash, moreover a skill in engaging with your customers as communities, and a provider of information that is valuable. As experts with superior knowledge of their Insurance niches, Insurance Brokers are fighting back and winning the Insurance marketing war using the traditional skills of networking and information.

So how do they do this?

We asked the UK’s leading consultancy in the use of these ‘new tools’, Speedie Consultants, just what do you need to do today to establish visibility on the Internet?

What is Twenty First Century Insurance marketing?

Here’s what the Speedie Consulting’s managing director and world reknowned Insurance Internet Marketing Coach, Jason Hulott, told Insurance Blog……

“Insurance marketing” , “web content” and “affiliate marketing” – these are all phrases that you may or may not be familiar with. However, these – and other marketing solutions – are key to boosting your business, both online and offline.

If you are looking to generate more business via your website, then it’s not a simple case of putting up a few pages and keeping your fingers crossed. No matter whether your finance and insurance business is based all online, or offline, you need to market your website through a number of several tried and tested methods, as well as keep ahead of your competitors as new marketing methods develop (eg social media).

Combined internet marketing and copywriting specialists Speedie Consultants Limited offers five main solutions for your finance and insurance marketing needs:

· web content

· affiliate marketing

Each of these elements are designed to maximise your exposure to potential clients. Speedie Consultants can tailor their service to meet your needs whether you want the comprehensive package or just one or two elements. A consultancy service is also available.

History

Speedie Consultants was established in 2003 by Jason and Stella Hulott, which sees them offering over 40 years’ combined experience in the internet marketing and copywriting industries. Supported by 15 freelance writers, a web design company and a web development team, they currently provide between 500,000 and 700,000 words of copy each month and can boost your business with finance and insurance marketing; the provision of web content; and affiliate marketing.

Jason’s background is in internet marketing – predominantly finance and insurance marketing – where he worked for the Woolwich before joining the UK’s first personal finance web aggregator in 2001 as a Content and Partnership Manager. In 2003 he set up Speedie Consultants, primarily providing internet marketing (including affiliate marketing), copywriting services and PR distribution services to finance clients such as Budget Insurance and British Insurance as well as non-finance clients such as MakeFriendsonline.com.

Stella is a PR and Copywriting specialist providing unique, quality web content. She has worked for Liverpool Victoria, Pearl Assurance, the Woolwich and the Foresters before co-founding Speedie Consultants Limited. Stella has written for major UK Finance and insurance websites such as TescoCompare.com, GoCompare.com, parts of the Towergate Partnership, British Insurance, Enhanced Wealth, Burgesses and Protection Insurance plus many more.

Speedie Consultants can provide clients with a comprehensive service that allows you to enhance your presence both online and offline. Their consultancy service offers you the know how to do this, as well how to effectively:

· run affiliate marketing programs

· make the most of your finance and insurance marketing tools.

Thanks Jason, there’s obviously a lot to take on board in this Insurance Marketing Brave New World. Insurance Blogger thinks that Budget Insurance’s ‘Compare The Meerkat’ social media marketing campaign has a set the standard for a whole new wave of customer insurance marketing and interaction. Once again it looks like those who embrace this new media early will be the long term winners!

Watch this Space!

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Back in the 1960′s if you were lucky you had a black and white televison – the box!
with an aerial that looked like a sea mine or something out of Doctor Who sitting on top of it.

There were 2 UK TV Channels:

The BBC – Mother of the Nation and voice of the world……

& ITV – which was a loose consortium of regional independent television companies that broadcast on their own frequency AND network distribution relay.

This meant that every time you changed channel, which was a process of turning a huge dial until you got a fuzzy ghost image – you had to turn the aerial as well to switch to a different signal supplier.

This caused much distress in every UK Household with people arguing over aerial placement whilst trying to watch fuzzy images of man supposedly walking on the Moon.

The Independent Television Companies were funded by advertising revenue for commercials placed in programme ‘intermissions’ known in the UK as ‘Commercial Breaks’. This allowed companies like Granada to fund their own programmes and make ‘soaps’ like Coronation Street.
Product placement was banned on The BBC and was also severely limited as to the acceptable use of on screen products, within ITV programme drama of the day.

This ban has very recently been lifted and you might soon even see the BBC’s Phil Mitchell on Eastenders popping down to his local Post Office TM for some Travel Insurance or visiting a car insurance comparison website for his Jaguar insurance, coming to our screens as desperate TV production companies try to raise additional funding in hard times.

Even the BBC will not remain immune in the face of falling TV viewing figures and the rise of integrated digital services.

Today ITV is still reliant upon revenue sourced from intermission commercials, however with global distribution opportunities for selling programmes abroad they are now able to find sponsors for most popular shows.

According to a recent survey by business intelligence group DataWatch Monitor UK, Insurance adverts account for 52% of the total advertising revenue spend on UK TV commercials and specifically car insurance which accounts for 63% of that.

So Who is spending all this money, millions of pounds that is underwriting some great UK independent TV productions?

Well unless you live under a rock or don’t own a screen (Boxes are consigned to pre-history along with the Dodo and the Betamax by the way!), you can’t have failed to notice that there is a car insurance price comparison site war going on out there at the moment with the BIG 4 all trying to outdo each other on spend and it’s getting dirty……….

So who are the big 4?
Well in no particular order , though Google has one….

Money Supermarket.com
Confused.com
Compare The Market.com
Go Compare.com

So who is winning this war?

Well it’s hard to give a definitive answer because campaigns are in a constant state of flux and one month it might be the furry meerkat toy rodent or the next month, the fat opera singer at No.1 in the Sales Charts. It is difficult to COMPARE!

The TV ads always tell the prospect car insurance purchasers to visit their website, so a fairly accurate measure of website usage over time by website name search, can be extracted from Google and here are the results….

WACKY RACES
As you can see, that annoying pompous man from the Dragons Den is leading the way by far at the moment with the furry rodent bringing up the rear. This is likely to change at Christmas when Compare The Market bring out the talkng meerkat. Looks like the fat annoying tenor over there Ad is working!!! For Now!

To see how your website compares to the big boys do your own visitor comparison with your competitiors over at Google Trends for Insurance Price Comparison giants

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Hmm!

Here’s the full story – Nominet domains

Let us know your thoughts!
Should obscene domain names be banned or is this freedom of speech?

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As an ex-employee of GA bonus (New Zealand Insurance) do I care?

At the time of the merger / takeover Insuranceblogger had already moved on to pastures new in the city, but I had left them over thirty commercial products on their brand new AS/400 and at the time it was annoying to see the Misers from Perth (GA) and the Wastrels from Whyteleafe (CU) surrender to the much weaker brand.

What a waste of money rebranding is – shareholders must be outraged, mind you they are all at it! The necessary systems centralisation cost which has already happened obviously needs a centralised culture under the same banner – A banner for job and branch streamlining.

I thought Santander was a port in the basque country!

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The company has developed software that converts documents to speech and video for the purposes of offering clients and prospects information about car insurance.

Heres a prototype. I don’t think those old brokers who sat around in Lloyds coffee house a few hundred years ago would ever have beleived the ‘cybervoice from hell’ and certainly wouldn’t have insured it!

As spokesman for the company said, “the system it allows us to disseminate globally, information and marketing materials which were formerly considered legacy, in totally new ways, for example, videos and podcasts of text documents and content.”

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The authors have dominated the search engines for years for insurance terms such as car insurance and mortgage protection. Now your Insurance marketing team can copy exactly how they did it.

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The System people have dominated the search engines for years for insurance terms such as car insurance and mortgage protection. Now your marketing team can copy how they did it.

Visit The System for all the latest Search Engine Marketing hot tips. you’ll be amazed what you learn whether you are new to Internet Marketing or a self confessed guru!

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One year down the line the website still looks shiny and new, mainly because nobody ever goes there!

Why? Well to be successful on the Internet you have to be visible. This means all the major search engines have to list your car insurance website, in particular Google.

Well getting a listng in Google may take you years and you’ll never going to be able to compete with all the big boys and their massive marketing budgets that dominate the search results.

So what other options are there?

Well Google allows you to buy a link on their home page for different keyword searches for example ‘car insurance’

And they’ve very kindly created a tool which will help you see how much its going to cost you to get a click through from google for the search term ‘car insurance’.

You can find it at Google Adwords Keyword Per Click Estimater

If you type in car insurance and set the currency and location to GB, you can see exactly whats its costing the large aggregator sites that dominate the front page paid listings in Google:

Heres the results for Car Insurance – GBP – UK for positions 1 to 3 on Google

Average CPC: £15.40 (at a maximum CPC of £33.65)
Estimated clicks per day: 1,091 – 1,367 (at a daily budget of £25,270.00)

Wow! These guys must be spending a fortune with Google when you think about how many thousands of keywords they bid on!

So we tried out another very competitive keyword in the current economic gloom, namely income protection insurance:

Average CPC: £5.82 (at a maximum CPC of £12.20)
Estimated clicks per day: 5 – 6 (at a daily budget of £50.00) Hmm not too bad!

how about Income Protection?

Average CPC: £5.19 (at a maximum CPC of £10.04)
Estimated clicks per day: 15 – 18 (at a daily budget of £110.00) – very interesting!!

Wghat about long tailed car insurance keywords like specialist car insurance

Average CPC: £9.92 (at a maximum CPC of £15.86)
Estimated clicks per day: 0 – 1 (at a daily budget of £15.86)

Well there you have it at – Around £10 per click even for car insurance keywords that aren’t even searched for much.

The future of the small independent car insurance broker online looks bleak.

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Word has reached one of our intrepid contributors that an Insurance / Investment Company with a very large warchest has been making approaches to some of the best Internet Insurance marketing companies who run the major independent insurance directories out there in Cyberspace, with the intention of aquisition. One company is believed to be in advanced talks with a Broker Network to the purported sum of five million UK pounds

Now this is hardly surprising stuff, but it’s made very interesting for two reasons.

There are currently around 10 to 20 very large agglomerates of insurance brokers and underwriters and investment companies out there in the UK who have reached their current size in the UK Insurance market today through aquisition of companies and Insurance Brokers and accounts and books of Insurance business and physical businesses and buildings.

So does this mean that there are no more available smaller real-world businesses to buy and they’ve finally turned their attention to what is available in other distribution channels?

OR

They’ve looked enviously at the way that Moneysupermarket.com etc. and all the other comparison / aggregator websites dominate the Search Engines for all the major keywords in their market, and have realised that these types of cyber insurance networks could give them a platform on which to compete and maybe take advantage over the single comparison site big Google payers, for just about every niche insurance market.

If the latter is true, which I doubt their business foresight or acumen, then we would see a serious shift in the way Insurance is sold on the Internet.

A large cyber insurance network would fit many a large insurance (broker or company)network with little or no painful business integration and could be assimilated in the existing business corporate Internet structure on a transitional basis with little or no disruption to current processes. The cyber network would create hundreds of links during any assimilation which by its very process would create and pass enough page rank to compete with all those comparison sites that buy links. Very powerful stuff. It would also give a rapid ROI as many of these cybernetworks dominate the niche insurance products cyber markets and search engines.

There are currently equally, about 20 of these insurance cyber networks out there. You can easily come across their websites everywhere in all Insurance Internet niches. In many places they are managing the complete online lead generation for individual insurance companies and brokers. They are easily recognisable from their generic or keyword domain names and are often managed by small teams of so called Webmasters.

So got any ideas whose after who?

We believe we can narrow it down to possibly three candidates for the honeypot simply by looking at who dominates the google query for ‘insurance directories’ and niche products keyword searches…..as for the wolf…hmm we’ll keep you posted if we hear anything but there are some very predatory broker networks and companies out there at the moment… so expect some big announcements soon!

Realising that Moneysupermarket and the other Insurance comparison websites that dominate the search engines front pages for keyword searches like ‘Car Insurance’
each spend over £5 million each week in Adwords and other PPC advertising perhaps £5 million for one of these internet website networks is small beer in the bigger scheme of things.

Even more worrying, especially for the niche players and the public is if the likes of MoneySupermarket.com or one of the other insurance comparison sites who retain their search engine postitions by buying lnks, see £5m as a very cheap investment indeed.

Isn’t agglomeration a wonderful thing. Did you use to collect football cards when you were a kid?

Expect a goldrush!

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1. It most definitely is about the domain name – you are what you say you are which is what people want and search for!

2. Out of the 200+ variables that google assigns to and then translates into a canonical value for a given node (webpage) and then runs its multivariate algos over to determine SERPS automatically – domain name can carry as much weight as title tag especially if it is natural language!

3. Domain name + great original content + natural linkage + refreshing content = Sucess which is deemed to be White Hat

4. Time – aged domain names over 5 years old and unused are immediately trusted by the SE’s – and rightly so as the investment has been long term!

5. Insurance domain names are white hot property at this current moment as canny investors adjust their long term investment plans, and they are changing hands rapidly as the smaller investors cash in to the aggregators and long term big boys. Expect 7 figures plus for exceptional collections and even a modest long established site in the financial sector will fetch £50K+.
Buying a green or brownfield website/domain name gives instant SE ranking with short term ROI and long term ambitions!

No related posts.

Whether you think its crap or not, it demonstrates the viral capabilities of video, accessible to everyone from their mobile phones and more importantly, while all the big budget insurance players are wasting their money on TV ads and trying to get to the top of search engines, they’ve missed the point that more people visit myspace.com and youtube.com than visit Google these days.

Social marketing is becoming more important daily and those pioneers will grab a large share of the personal recommendation market.

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