Hello, I'm John Kitson, and this is my blog.

Driving down to Birmingham after attending a family funeral on a wet and dark Friday night last week, I wasn’t really feeling or expecting too much from the evening ahead at the Insurance Times Awards.

I’ve been receiving a lot of feedback recently from a number of places. It started last Sunday on a cool rugby pitch in Norfolk where my son Tom had just finished an under 8’s training session and the coaches came across to me to give me some positive feedback on his progress.  To give this some context it’s been a tough start to the season for Tom having moved up two teams, leaving behind his school mates and its fair to say he’s experienced some difficulty staying on the park during matches due to some over-exuberance in the tackle and a desire not just to take the tag (its non-contact until next year) but often the opposing player as well! Roll on next season.

As my colleagues are all returning from their holidays,

And a wonderful warm dry summer in Norfolk turns to Autumn overnight,

And I get drenched getting off the train at 9 in the evening and drive home in the dark,

So here I am (at last), 9 months since the birth of the Janice & John blog and 42 ‘posts’ later (see I’ve got the terminology right already, a natural!) it’s finally my turn to blog. Brian Spinks, head of sales & marketing, officially a guest blogger.

It’s 7 weeks since I wrote my first ever blog, it hasn’t turned me into a blog addict, a ‘Twitterer’ or a ‘Facebook’ regular. I like talking too much to ever do all my communications via virtual means, any of you who’ve met me will know that to be the case.

“Okay, there’s three weeks to go before you dump the Norwich Union name. How are you feeling?”

“We’re not dumping the name – as you put it … we’re changing the name,” I retort …  I don’t remember Bruce saying “sometimes dumping your name is a chance to show the world who you’ve always wanted to be”.

“Okay … change/dump – same thing…How are you feeling?” came the reply snippily.

Is this the most stressful business environment I’ve ever been in …? (not Aviva just the world of commerce!) Generally … and for me at the moment?

That was the thing winging its way around in my head early one morning (as it does) …

I’ve been thinking about “cut through” a lot this week.

For those not in the know, “cut through” is an advertising term.

It means that in a world of noise, colour, advertising, bill boards, internet, magazines of every shape and size, text messaging and outbound calling, the human brain gets cluttered and full. Therefore if you’ve got a message you want to get across, you have to “cut through” the noise.

You know what, you think you have a great relationship with the Insurance press.

You make yourself available, you put forward spokespeople, you brief them in advance on big initiatives, strategic “journeys”(!) and you very very occasionally give them an ‘off the record’ snippet/comment. and then you agree to do a running commentary on the biggest financial services rebrand ever in the UK – and you do it in a ‘bloggish’ style to try something new.

3 weeks in and I’ve certainly had some feedback on this, not all positive but as they say in HR, “all feedback is a gift”. So thanks for all your presents, Santa was busy.

It’s fair to say that certainly in the Broker market awareness of the name change is at an all time high (so it should be) and some say “bring it on”, “about time”. Others question the wisdom of the timing.

Well, it’s started, well it started some time ago but we’ve now moved into fourth gear in terms of communicating more widely that we’re changing our name.

As I ate a brussel sprout, I heard Ringo Starr (nee Richard Starkey) on the television and caught Bruce Willis saying, “would Walter Willis have ever been a leading man?”