Just Ducky
You have to admire the Aflac duck and how far the brand has come in a very short period of time. Kaplan Thaler Group deserves kudos for creating a brand mascot that isn't creepy and/or kooky. One that is fun and cool. The "Aflac" quack is part of everyday lexicon. You look forward to how they're going to execute the next spot to keep the Aflac duck fun, interesting and relevant.
That is why it is so fascinating to see Aflac shift emphasis over to the BTB world with their Aflac for business campaign. Consumer advertising built the Aflac brand, very much driving an increase in advertising directed at the consumer in the insurance category. They shunned the traditional channel strategy of brokers and agents in their initial efforts. Aflac drove awareness of short term disability insurance - a product no one wanted to talk about. Now they're chasing revenue in the business world.
Despite all the direct to consumer advertising in the financial services and insurance category, the real money is still in the broker and/or producer segment. That is where the power lies. Aflac is targeting this segment with ads aimed at the benefits and human resources managers. These key influences are the ultimate gatekeepers where the brand relationship has to work both rationally and emotionally. After all, they are benefits participants as well.
According to their dedicated business portion of the Aflac web site http://www.aflac.com/us/en/aflacforbusiness/default.aspx, they have over 400,000 companies offering Aflac benefits. They do the right thing in segmenting and tiering companies into small (0-99), mid-size (100-999) and large (1000+) employee target accounts. Distinct portals are in place for broker relationships and inducements to become agents. At first glance, they're doing all the right things to establish credibility in the channel. Creatively, it's a different story.
These use a pseudo company endorsement strategy in their ads - Praline's Ice Cream and Hank's Auto Body - that doesn't play out well. It doesn't connote a serious enough feel and appeal. The ads exude a sense that Aflac is for the small companies only. It is not an effective judge us by the company we keep strategy (think the SAP campaign) based on not knowing these fictitious companies. Fun creative, but likely judged by the segment players and channel partners as not being serious enough. For anyone in the position of selecting and purchasing employee benefits, it's all business. Aflac's creative strategy is a bit flawed based on not knowing the audience well enough. What is right for the consumer sometimes falls apart in distribution channels. Channel dynamics and nuances need to be taken into account and addressed in channel relevant executions.
I would have liked to see more made out of Aflac's new tagline - "We've got you under our wing." It offers a multitude of opportunities to make a deeper connection and to resonate better with the ultimate benefits decision makers at small, medium and larger companies. Protection in today's uncertain world is a powerful message and one that Aflac should exploit in future business to business and business to channel ads. The channel marketing is often turbulent, especially for ducks.
The fictitious-business approach seems to reflect a mistaken belief that corporate customers can be reached successfully simply by "scaling up" tactics that work with consumers. Fictitious consumers have been a staple in insurance ads forever, right? Witness, for instance, visitors to the kiosk staffed by that Progressive girl. (Google says her name is Flo, by the way; the Aflac duck evidently has no name. )
If actors playing satisfied customers are enough to interest consumers in Aflac, why won't fictitious happy business owners lure business customers? Obviously -- it seems to B2B marketing types, anyway -- it's because the priorities and concerns of HR and benefits managers are much more complex than those of consumers, and the requirements for spec-ing out an employee benefits package involve many more variables than those for an individual or family policy. What meets the need of one company is almost never going to fit the needs of another, so the happy neighbor comparison lacks meaning.
Aflac could acknowledge the way it addresses the very different needs of individual companies and still keep the duck -- e.g. with a B2B-specific version of its "Get the Aflacts" program -- but pseudo-companies aren't the right approach.
It's all about knowing your audience, and appealing to what matters most to them. With a duck.