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TIAA-CREF Life Insurance Company

Gold Stevie Award Winner 2012, Click to Enter The 2014 American Business Awards

Company: TIAA-CREF
Entry Submitted By: TIAA-CREF Life Insurance Company
Company Description: Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA–CREF) is a Fortune 100 financial services organization that is the leading retirement provider for people who work in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields. TIAA–CREF serves 3.7 million active and retired employees participating at more than 15,000 institutions and has $487 billion in combin
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Categories - Industry
Nomination Sub Category: Marketing Campaign of the Year - Insurance

Nomination Title: TIAA-CREF Life Insurance Integrated Campaign

Tell the story of this nominated marketing campaign for the judges (up to 525 words). Describe the genesis, planning, execution, and results to date of your campaign. If applicable, remember to describe what's unique or innovative about your campaign:

TIAA-CREF Life Insurance Company (TC Life) is a wholly owned subsidiary of TIAA-CREF. TC Life marketing originated this campaign based on feedback from frontline teams, product marketing, management and other marketing partners. Feedback was evaluated and a course of action was developed that involved improved messaging, with a focus on customer needs, across all marketing materials (digital, direct mail, collateral). The decision was made to develop a stronger strategic vision to align marketing efforts and business needs. This would ensure we are building and improving the appropriate framework for our communications. The vision included integrated channel messaging and a delivery implementation plan. Improvements would also allow for ease-of-use, cost savings, increased customer engagement and improved incoming calls to the call center.

The message focused on the key benefit for the customer, including customer needs at their particular life stage and trigger events that may produce a customer need. We developed a new strategy to position and communicate life insurance products to clients, implemented improved channel integration and expanded our distribution channel support. We highlighted the advantages of choosing one of the “Intelligent Life” permanent life insurance products and the benefits of trusting TC Life. We continued this messaging across all product lines for a consistent experience for the customer.

Working together, our marketing, creative, business development and sales teams developed a framework that improved our branding efforts and carried our color scheme across business lines. We incorporated QR codes and vanity URLs for assimilation into digital channels. To allow effective multi-channel distribution, the brochures were developed to be used together (by advisors as a tool kit) or independently depending on the distribution channel and client need. Additionally, we reinforced TIAA-CREF corporate voice through co-operation with other marketing partners.

Our targeted implementation of our new brochure structure was rolled out at the Life Insurance Awareness events at TIAA-CREF. It consisted of consolidated product specific brochures of TC Life product offerings (Term Life Insurance brochure, Universal Life Insurance brochure, Variable Universal Life Insurance brochure and The Intelligent Life Advantage brochure). The Term Life Insurance brochure was also produced in Spanish to capture a broader multi-cultural audience. The creation of the Life Insurance at a Glance brochure allowed easy review of all products in one intuitive brochure. The implementation of the 4-Step Guide to Life Insurance allowed the customer to access general life insurance information in multiple ways. This included using QR codes or vanity URLs to lead the customer to a website tool or utilizing a fillable pdf brochure to access information that calculated information to help identify their life insurance needs. We had a purposeful intent to incorporate the customer needs into various channels. This was the first campaign within the life insurance company to integrate print messaging across direct mail and digital channels.

Our results today show an increase in call volume from our brochures to the call center, from 2012, by 50%. We also received positive feedback from our employees, sales and distribution channels.

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2. Provide a brief biography of the leader of the team that planned and executed this marketing campaign (up to 125 words):

Theresa Romano is a marketing professional with over 14 years experience in the financial services industry. She has a Master of Arts from Queen’s University of Charlotte. Theresa possesses excellent written and verbal communication abilities. Her skills include working as a marketing strategist to promote products via a multitude of platforms. She consistently communicates with professionals in the organization to keep marketing strategy, messaging and brand consistent across areas. She works to translate strategy into tactical actions, along with developing communication plans to creatively get the word out about products and services offered. Theresa manages resources for execution of strategy into tactical actions, including comprehensive graphical communications, as well as internal and external web communications which encompass all distribution channels.