2018 commended, Direct Line, brand revitalisation - case study

ENTIRE ENTRY CONFIDENTIAL

Searching for insurance is a bore. You don’t care who the provider is – they’re all the same, aren’t they? You just want the cheapest, speediest solution.
This is the mindset that, back in 2014, caused Direct Line to slump from market champion to just another insurer. The onset of price comparison websites was driving a tide of commoditisation, and customer numbers had been declining for five years straight. The company needed radical intervention. It set objectives to:

• Differentiate the brand.
• Rebuild consumer trust.
• Stem and reverse the commercial decline.

Direct Line’s bold strategy was to disrupt the market’s preoccupation with price head on, by directly addressing consumers’ fundamental insurance need (putting things right quickly and easily when they’ve gone wrong). After 18 months of R&D, Direct Line repositioned itself as the ‘fixers’ of the industry. It launched a series of unique service propositions that offered high performance, hasslefree insurance with no additional costs or catches. The propositions were launched with a large-scale integrated campaign that targeted consumers at multiple touchpoints...