With the price of a 30-second ad on national TV last year running anywhere from $75,000 to $200,000 ”“ not including production costs ”“ companies are increasingly seeking more cost-effective strategies for reaching audiences.
The Hiscox Insurance Co. Inc. believes it has hit the jackpot.
On June 6, Hiscox launched “Leap Year,” a web-only sitcom that chronicles five friends who respond to losing their jobs by banding together to develop a business plan for a startup.
The series, which will feature 10 episodes in all, is available on a number of websites, including Youtube.com and Hulu.com.
Enter Hiscox, which specializes in small-business insurance and is one of the only providers in the U.S. with which customers can buy policies online.
The British insurance company, which has offices in Armonk, N.Y., in addition to its U.S. headquarters in New York City, rolled out its live online insurance services in the U.S. last November. The seven months since then have been all about building a brand, and “Leap Year” is a part of that, said Kevin Kerridge, director for Hiscox Small Business Insurance.
“The objective (of the creative team) was to find me something that really breaks the ice with the small-business consumer in the U.S. that no other small-business provider would do,” Kerridge said. “(Hiscox is) building awareness of who we are, building affinity of us as a brand.”
Aside from being presented by Hiscox, advertising and logos are kept to a minimum. Instead, Kerridge”™s aim is for the product to open up a dialogue with small-business owners in hopes of increasing the company”™s exposure.
“As we went through the session, I just thought, ”˜What a great way to achieve the objective of getting people talking about us,”™” he said. “It is a great way for us to build conversations with small businesses over here in an engaging and entertaining way.”
With a market valuation of $2 billion, Hiscox is relatively small compared to other U.S. insurance providers, making it all the more important to keep costs down, Kerridge said.
Hiscox USA, which counts thousands of U.S. small-business insurance customers already, produced the entire series for less than $400,000. The first episode was estimated to have drawn some 50,000 viewers, said Hunter Hoffman, U.S. communications manager for Hiscox. More than 26,000 viewers watched each of the first two episodes on Youtube.com alone, he said.
MXenergy, an independent natural gas and electricity provider headquartered in Stamford and available in 15 states, took a different but equally novel approach.
In an effort to inform consumers in the tristate area that they have a choice between the utility companies and independent providers for natural gas and electricity services, MXenergy launched a cable TV channel that is available to Cablevision customers at channel 654 for no additional cost. MXenergyTV made its debut last November.
So far, the savings for MXenergy have been “tremendous,” said Marjorie Kass, managing director of brand strategy and marketing communications at MXenergy. Kass said the annual cost of the MXenergyTV cable channel is roughly equivalent to the cost of two or three direct-mail campaigns to consumers in MXenergy”™s Connecticut market alone.
“As of this week we”™re close to 1 million subscribers,” Kass said, adding they expect to have had some 3.1 million viewers by the year”™s end. “It”™s been wonderful because what we do know is many of the people who call us or go to our website have heard of us, so that would really be a benchmark for how we feel that it”™s working.”
The MXenergyTV channel includes a number of interactive guides on ways people are conserving energy as well as tips for keeping energy costs down for homes and businesses.
Stacey Cohen, president of Co-Communications Inc., a public relations agency with offices in Hartford and Mount Kisco, N.Y., said videos are becoming increasingly vital components to a successful marketing campaign.
“When I look at embarking on a marketing campaign for a client I want to look at, ”˜How can we position them and package them in a way that we”™re positioning them as bigger, brighter and louder?”™” Cohen said. “And yes, video is really key.”
