Norwich Union is Dead! Arriva Aviva!
The grand old lady from carrot crunching country just couldn't cut the mustard with the bosses of the Iberian sounding Aviva and will officially be given the fatal injection at midnight tonight.
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!
Labels: AVIVA, Economy, Insurance, Insurance companies, insurance marketing, insurance news, mergers, norwich union, unemployment
Aviva - Change Management out of control
I don't really care what happens to Aviva, in fact I find it an interesting experiment on brand destruction and it's subsequent consequences in cyberspace. I gave up caring about Aviva a long time ago when it got taken over by Norwich Union!
How did that happen eh?
Two massive GOOD performing companies General Accident and Commercial Union, bastions of British Insurance for a century, allow some little upstart with a bad reputation amongst
insurance brokers - Norwich Union, to come in take them both over, totally change direction, and destroy not just the brands but the ethos and systems of two great companies.
Commercial Union was a mess when GA took it over, in need of new systems and a people cull.
GA managed to absorb what was a good book of general business and the largest Life Insurance account int the UK, into its latest systems with little pain. The merger seem to work well as CGU until the motor bike people came along during the time of large takeovers and stock market profit grabbing.
Those were the days.... I remember the day I was at my city desk when a friend from GA phoned me up from Scotland to say they'd seen CU going into the boardroom at Perth. Oh if only they had Internet day trading facilities in those days......
So recently Insurance blogger has been watching closely and has noticed the following
1 A decision to destroy another brand and move to the megalith status of AVIVA
2. Rationalisation of all distribution outlets - It's well documented in the insurance newspapers, the souring relationships of the large conglommerates of Insurance Broking Networks, consolidators and the Internet aggregators and the withdrawal of NU from many of these product markets.
NU has also almost completely stopped it's external Internet distribution and has discharged the duties of affiliates in favour of centralised and PPC marketing.
3.The online affiliate marketing company OMG from Norwich whose account was founded on NU products, has seen all but the
LIFE INSURANCE products withdrawn. It's now beholden to RBS products to keep it alive in the online insurance arena.
At least there are some sensible people in the Life Dept - which rules the general insurance department anyway, as the Insurance side of the business is incidental in the scheme of things.
4. Rationalisation of labour
From an online marketing point of view, Insurance blogger thinks that NU whoever you are, have totally cocked up, and only time will tell just how badly - not that they care, its not their money, they are just playing with the shareholders money in exactly the same way as those bank employees did.
Still I don't care that they are wasting the shareholders money, they'll just turn around anyway and put it down to the cost of 'brand alignment'.
The sad thing is that they are heading in totally the wrong direction.
To be successful on the Internet today, you must have a strong brand.
All the search engine results are dominated by the big brands, including NorwichUnion.com.
The IT department has probably told the marketing people to say they've got it all under control by using what is known as a 301 redirect to the new Aviva site.
tee hee...
The really sad thinng though is that, they are brand destroyers, acquiring, consuming, and destroying famous british brands that they should be cherishing and maximising market coverage with.
They won't change, they've been doing it a long time - after all they destroyed GA Bonus which was voted for by the readers of
Insurance Times as the third most important Insurance invention ever after Lloyds and Direct Line.
Maybe it is the right time to shrink the book........
No....!
Good job I sold my shares years ago.
Hang on they've still got my pension fund........
Labels: AVIVA, Insurance, norwich union
Aviva flops with the not so happy public
It seems that the UK public have finally had enough of being 'Happy' and want it consigned to the dustbin of bad advertising history along with the Norwich Union brand.
While searching the planet to bring you interesting debate about the state of UK Insurance, we stumbled upon, this amazing post to Aviva's latest advertising campaign at the Online Ad agency distribution site Visit4vista. You can see the ad and read the original post at the link below.
The post is from someone who calls himself Mr Mustard and although damning, Insurance Blogger thinks that it captures the sentiments being heard 'down the pub' regarding this agglomeration of some fine old British Insurance Companies( in Scotland...hmm)under this 'new' (six years old) banner.
I see that Aviva (who used to be Norwich Union) are still ploughing on with their ‘Happy’ campaign. It seems amazingly inappropriate and cack-handed under our present financial circumstances, so either they are genuinely uncaring or really believe that they can cheer us all up with this self-congratulationary nonsense. Hundreds of poor saps have been dragooned into their headquarters to shake hands with ‘Happy’ who is welcoming them back into the Aviva/Norwich Union fold.
I’m sure that quite a number of people have had to come back to Aviva/NU on account of it being one of the few financial institutions that is still solvent, but I really don’t see this as an excuse for boasting.
Furthermore, no doubt completely over-excited at their continued solvency, or perhaps just because they have two names, Aviva/NU seem also to have, at present, two advertising campaigns. There is another one out there which is less silly than ‘Happy’ but is merely dull in an efficiently corporate/moderne sort of way, and drones on about a ‘Company built around individuals’, which is hardly a new thought, but is at least inoffensive.
Personally I believe that a period of quiet reflection would be more appropriate for the whole financial sector, and if they want to advertise at all, they should just make very simple and cheap commercials featuring their chief executives and high flying investment managers issuing grovelling apologies for having lost everyone’s money.More Reasons to question Aviva
1. Call Centres in India when we've got people on the dole.
2. Do you know just how many of the other UK financial Institution's AVIVA has got its hands into and owns a large part of? You'd be very surprised!
3. You tell us - serious comments below please
"Quote Me Happy" We're not so happy easter bunnies!
Labels: AVIVA, norwich union quote me happy
Thousands Welomed Ba..
