The art of reinvention

So how much did Norwich Union spend in the process of rebranding to Aviva back in 2008?

The insurer has always been just a little coy about the exact figure, perhaps because the project was substantially funded by policyholders and shareholders.  What we do know is that the instantly-forgettable, star-studded TV advert campaign cost a mind-boggling £80m.

The big cheeses within Norwich Union...sorry...Aviva claim that this was a successful exercise as their 'brand awareness' rose from 35% to 80% as a result.  Of course, anybody can boost name awareness by means of the relatively simple device of throwing very large sums of money around - but what does that produce in terms of longer-term, practical benefits?  In fact, this kind of marketing activity is notoriously short-termist in terms of tangible results: the pop group ABC achieved a brief spasm of notoriety by burning £1m in notes on a cottage fire, but what value is that, in the cosmic scale of things?

Within the IFA community, value is perceived in other ways.  Did this hugely expensive exercise generate a tranche of better-value products for consumers?  Not that we've seen.  Did the magical transmogrification of the name suddenly result in a more integrated, consistent service proposition?  Were we no longer going to be driven demented by the hotchpotch of Provident Mutual, General Accident, Commercial Union, CGU and Norwich Union legacy systems?  Were service standards now going to be upgraded to something approaching 'acceptable'?

Not a bit of it.  The company might have a new name, but to all intents and purposes, absolutely nothing has changed.  Even at the date of writing, attempting to unravel Norwich Union...sorry...Aviva's administrative bungles requires repeating the same story to individuals in multiple departments, because they are all on different systems which don't talk to each other.

Which brings me to the point of this blog entry.  Nobody denies that our profession needs to change.  It hasn't - as a general rule - delivered good value products.  It hasn't - as a general rule - treated customers acceptably, let alone 'fairly'.  It doesn't - as a general rule - provide an adequate service.  The big industry dinosaurs appear to think that the answer is to rebrand - for those of us at the sharp end, delivering real financial solutions for real people's needs, the nature of change needs to be much more substantive.  It needs to have integrity and it needs to actually produce the right outcomes.

In 2010, 2020 Financial Services will be delivering further improvements in functionality right across our network-wide, integrated backoffice platform.  We will also be delivering comprehensive, real-world financial-planning tools for hard-pressed IFAs and financial planners.