2015-07-04
427
MORE TH>N BUSINESS (M>B), one of the Britain’s most innovative insurance companies and part of RSA Group, worked with MS&L to develop a media strategy that would deliver branded coverage across UK national, regional and trade media. The objective of the campaign was to raise awareness of and demonstrate differentiation for M>B amongst its target audience of independent business owners, typically operating micro companies with less than five employees. The campaign had to deliver high quality coverage that was directly relevant to the target audience, spoke to their issues and provided a high return on investment. Another prerequisite was a programme that could be replicated once per quarter, whilst continuing to deliver substantial coverage. Focusing on M>B’s communications strategy; “to be the champion of the micro business”, it was determined that the campaign needed an ‘ownable’ property. This had to generate coverage but also needed to deliver a thought leadership platform that illustrated M>B’s campaigning activities on behalf of small enterprises.
A strategy for thought leadership
MS&L researched the key issues that impact upon micro businesses and determined that there was a gap in the market for an index to track the impact of inflation on small and micro businesses. From this insight, the idea of the M>B Business Inflation Guide (BIG) was born. It was to be an objective indicator that would measure the cost of running small and micro businesses in the UK. The campaign was not and could not be perceived as a PR survey. It had to be credible and deliver genuinely original insight. For this reason, MS&L and M>B approached Warwick Business School as its academic partner. The backbone of BIG was the identification of a ‘basket’ of 20 of the most important expenditure items for small and micro businesses, broken down by industry sector and region. Using the ‘basket’ as the criteria for measurement, Warwick Business School was able to deliver quarterly updates tracking inflation as it pertained specifically to small and micro businesses.
