Directing 100s of marketers to one marketing approach.
MetLife is one of the largest providers of insurance, annuities and employee benefit programmes in the world. Following a restructuring exercise, they wanted to invigorate and harmonise their global marketing strategy. We were asked to make sure their teams across the globe were speaking to customers with the same messages, in the same way. However we would resolve the issue, we knew we had to be clear, consistent, and above all, coherent.
The challenge
Direct 100s of marketers in 60 global locations to one approach of marketing.
What we did
Addressing different marketplaces, while the organisation is going through significant change – isn’t that exactly when marketers will all need to be reading from the same page? It’s vital that their messages are unambiguous, compliant, and reliable.
So we created the MetLife Playbook. An easy-to-navigate tool that helped colleagues understand and act on the changes happening across the business. All 80 pages of it. The Playbook showed employees in 60 different global locations how their daily work fitted into the big picture and enabled them to speak clearly and coherently, with a single voice. Everything in sync – in simple language that was easy to understand.
First and foremost, we made sure the tone was upbeat and constructive. Direct. Clear. Human. This was a positive story and we were determined to help everyone at MetLife move forward together. We used persuasive language, encouraging hundreds of MetLife marketing professionals around the world to consider their roles in the same way.
The triumph
Since it was published on MetLife’s intranet, it’s been downloaded by hundreds of users and is proving to be the most popular MetLife tool from almost 100 available items.
And feedback from the project team: “Write the Talk’s approach of developing a narrative from large amounts of raw material was hugely effective. Their pitch of English was just right for an international audience – getting the balance right between simplicity and authenticity, and telling a story more than just relating the facts. The process was innovative for MetLife and we haven’t worked with any external agency more effectively!”