This long-established insurance company based in New Jersey operates in 40 countries. Its international division services customers in the Americas and Asia through its own sales staff and other financial institutions.

The challenge

The insurance environment is evolving rapidly. Customers want direct access to insurance providers, they want things to happen fast, but they still want to be treated as individuals. Our client is undertaking a three-year digital transformation programme to develop and implement new back-office processing, new improved systems for staff, and new digital tools for customers. These new systems and capabilities will be introduced in all their international markets but with different sequencing. 

It’s a significant investment but understanding and engagement is low. The staggered implementation into relatively independent markets means the programme lacks identity and any clear sense of progress and end-benefits. To succeed, the programme needs to engage its stakeholders and build momentum and ownership of what is being delivered.

What we did

Act one: SHAPE  
Develop the story that persuades people 
(applying the science behind human connection, we work with clients to develop a purposeful and emotionally engaging story)

 We brought together the senior stakeholders for two workshops, the first focusing on the rationale for the programme, its major engagement challenges and the personality it needs to engage and keep the attention of its audiences. 

During this first intensive session and subsequent creative development, we distilled a clear purpose for the programme, a distinctive set of personality traits for this agent of change, and persuasive storylines that would drive the shift in understanding needed in the months and years to come.

Act two: STRUCTURE 
Embed the story in the minds that matter 
(building the communication strategy as an evolving Episode Plan to keep ongoing plot lines compelling and the audience on board) 

The second workshop concentrated on mapping the ebb and flow of each storyline over the first six months of the programme. The storylines in any long-running story rise and fall in prominence over time and the same is true for our narrative storylines. Delivery and communication milestones were plotted and opportunities to shape the story around them identified. The priority for the programme’s comms emerged from this process, providing a clear template for everything they communicated.

Act three: SHARE
Get the story delivering on its promise 
(keeping the narrative and communication strategy relevant and value-creating)

The value of a campaign is that it works harder and provides better returns than a series of disparate communications. Ours kicked off with a powerful visual identity and strapline to bring the programme to life. It was followed by a 90-second signature film to embed the identity and make further comms recognisable. It provided an emphasis on employees’ voices, proof points for senior leaders who needed convincing about the need for change, and showed how smaller parts played fitted together to form the bigger transformation. To make sure communication around the transformation programme isn’t lost in translation as it lands in different countries, we’re creating a series of travel guides to act as both reference and transformation roadmap.

The triumph

The work we’ve completed so far with the client team on the digital transformation programme has been described as extraordinarily helpful and the Executive Sponsor for the digital transformation programme had this to say: “Write the Talk’s storytelling framework and approach not only made us better communicators internally and externally, it also helped clarify our thinking and sharpen our focus on the program overall. They are masterful at helping distil business problems to their essence – an absolutely critical prerequisite for getting transformation right.”