Orchids and Onions – Miway do it their way

There are probably few products or services which are more of a “grudge” purchase than short-term insurance.

But in South Africa, we must have – if we want to have any sort of peace of mind in our crime-ridden country – insurance on our vehicles, our houses, the content of our houses, our electronic equipment.

So if you’re selling a product nobody wants, but everybody needs, how do you go about it?

Quite a few short-term insurers push the price factor heavily, knowing that, in these tough financial times, that is often the prime consideration for insurance buyers.

Miway has tended to focus more on the human side of insurance – how being covered can help in times of emergency, and how the company’s staff are more than just a voice on the other end of a phone line. That’s the ethos behind the re-told true story of a client who was involved in a serious car crash and how the Miway agent kept in touch well above and beyond the call of duty.

The company’s new campaign sticks to that human emotion theme by explaining life insurance not in terms of the cold hard financial facts of protecting you, but in terms of what the items you’re insuring really mean to you.

So, your car is not just a four-wheel device for getting from A to B, but it’s the excitement in your little girl’s eyes as you take her to school on her first day. It’s more than a motorcycle, it’s the freedom you get from being on the open road. It’s more than a laptop computer, it’s the way your family stays in touch, via video calling, with gogo far away. And, it’s not a house, it’s the place where your precious little bundle of joy will take her first tottering steps.

The things you insure, then, are worth far more than their intrinsic value. Once you understand that, you’ll want to look after them – and insurance will seem like the way to do it. An insurance policy won’t then be a grudge purchase, it will be a way to help you live, and preserve the wonderful life you are living.

The positioning of the marketing is excellent and the TV ad is shot with ordinary-looking people so it resonates with the target market.

So, well done to Miway Insurance. An Orchid for that clever bit of thinking.

There weren’t that many ads promoting Heritage Day – at least not that I could see. Perhaps that’s because times are tight and this sort of patriotism might be regarded by company bean counters as a bit of unnecessary fluff. Perhaps it’s also because promoting heritage can be mis-read in so many ways in this paranoid, angry, resentful country of ours.

Heritage – particularly when you’re trying to sing the hackneyed “Rainbow Nation” song – seems out of place. And a brand trying to do it could do itself harm in the process.

On the other hand, when patriotism is done properly, is can serve to take us back to the better times and remind us that South Africa, as a nation, is always going to be bigger than the sum of its constituent parts.

So, I rather liked this simple print ad for Robertsons’ spices: Its different coloured bottles lined up to replicate the South African flag.

Individually, all very different flavours. Together, a harmonious whole. So, an Orchid to Robertsons.

Maybe we should get marketers and advertising people to run this country.

Brendan Seery.

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