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.

After rapidly checking in and quickly swapping my black suit and tie for a black DJ and bow tie, I darted to the Aviva branded bar area to press the flesh, hook up with members of my brilliant marketing team and play host to the finalists from the IT pack…Oh yes and get that much deserved and eagerly awaited drink!

At the bar I quickly remembered how important the Insurance Times awards are. It’s our moment (our being the industry at large) to be recognised for our achievements, a chance to bask in the glory as a winner, even if only for a brief moment and of course the opportunity to meet our broker friends and even our competitors. Soon we had all taken our seats for dinner, the gold shower curtain (you had to be there) had fallen to the floor and all eyes were lifted heaven-ward to the imposing if rather high stage. The awards began to flow, as did the wine, as did the chat and on stage our industry talent was recognised.

One award Aviva had entered this year was especially close to my heart. The Industry Communications Strategy of the Year encompassed everything my marketing team had worked so hard on this year. Ensuring that our brokers, were completely engaged and informed as we moved from Norwich Union to Aviva here in the UK.  

As I sat at the dinner table I started thinking about the variety of work undertaken to ensure that brokers were happy with the way we had communicated the change to Aviva. This blog,  the e-zines, BIBA conference, the heritage supplement and our TV advert promoting brokers as the right choice for business insurance – all playing a part in ensuring that 9 out of 10 brokers were happy with the manner we had communicated the change to Aviva.

And for me that’s the real prize, so as the winners were being read out (well done Matthew Stringer on winning the IT Pack – well deserved!), I felt a real sense of pride. Even if we didn’t win the award we had still achieved a lot this year…But we did win!

And it’s great to have been recognised externally by experts in the industry for a great job done and have the opportunity to receive the award and walk around post ceremony showing off our very own gold bar all to the sounds of Tony Hadley…

Brian Spinks, Head of Corporate Marketing

I am Alan, son of Sander, father to Fraser, native of Kilmarnock, friend to English Andrew, I am many things to many people but at this moment I am the ‘Johnblogstitute’. Normally I look after Partnerships for Norwich Union, soon to be Aviva. I know a lot of you out there will be thinking what’s he doing writing on John’s blog, he’s not in the broker business but, here at Aviva we embrace different perspectives. After all, Partnerships is a big piece of Aviva’s distribution strength in the UK, working in concert with our colleagues in the broker world – the lines, to be honest, get quite blurry sometimes but that just adds to the challenge!

One of the biggest perks of being in Partnerships is meeting people from a wide range of backgrounds, culture and organisations. Take for example last Monday; we, in conjunction, with the lovely ladies at Insurance Times, met some existing and potential partners, I am with the Irish on this – there’s no such thing as strangers just friends you haven’t yet met. It was an interesting and lively debate with lots of strong views on what makes a good partnership and what makes a partnership great.  A key theme though was definitely both parties having skin in the game.  Hopefully everyone involved left with a sense of Aviva’s commitment to the Partnership market, I know I left thinking that Partnerships in many ways are a bit like a bag of Revels™ – you don’t always get what you want or expect but if there are two of you sharing the bag, chances are there’s something in it for both of you.

We, Aviva, have had a ‘hard’ 12 months in Partnerships; Competition Commission and FSA direction on the future of the payment protection market, the economic environment and the subsequent impact on trading conditions, some very good friends falling on difficult times, consolidation in the financial services industry – the perfect storm I have heard.  But blow me, on the other hand there is a wealth of opportunities and challenges if we turn and face into it. As Sir Winston Churchill said “kites rise highest against the wind, not with it”.  In Partners’ branches across the country, staff are doing a roaring trade in household insurance – with limited opportunity to sell standard banking fare, insurance products offer them a great opportunity to build on their relationship with the customer in front of them – a “moment of truth” as Cilla Black would say.  Like I said, it gets a bit blurry sometimes between Partnership and the broker world, but something they definitely have in common is that for some of the most important insurance products both Partners and Brokers have a powerful moment; face to face; to engage their customers in a conversation about protecting the most important things in their world.  Our name change to Aviva in June will help us put more of Aviva UK products and services in their hands to sell where and when it makes sense for the customer to buy. How cool will that be!

Alan Sanderson is Director of Affinities

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.

Then your blog gets “most read feature” (thanks to the fans out there…all 4 of you) and then you wake up and see an imposing black and white photo of your CEO with a ’snippy’ headline.

Inside, when you read the article it looks as though Ellen and Igal didn’t hit it off.

She starts off with ‘He looks bored’. He’d probably been in a 1 to 1 with me and I’d been chattering away as usual!

But Igal is never bored. His mind is so fast it “whir’s”.

You’d think wouldn’t you, with my blog etc there’d be a bit of “you scratch my back etc”.

You then see a letter on page 19 from NU regarding ‘loaves of bread and NU’’.

Then I receive a torrent of emails on:

1) Why didn’t Ellen and Igal get on?

2) What’s this about commission disclosure (the letter isn’t an official stance, but it makes you think, always a good thing)?

3) It triggers a flurry of emails regarding change / our direct business and free contents /commission – you name it.

Well what triggers the flurry of emails? Your guess is as good as mine.

What it shows though is that:

1) People have seen the name change advertising

2) NU/Aviva provokes (rightly or wrongly) emotions (that’s a really good thing!)

3) Sometimes we get it wrong and the communication to key brokers about Direct Home is missing and there is an explanation (trust me!!) and it does not mean that brokers are not the most important channel.

4) Insurance Times & NU/Aviva have a good healthy relationship and there is no such thing as “you scratch mine, I’ll scratch yours” going on. And neither should there be.

So, three weeks in and my resolve to ignore emails and send less is in tatters.

My resolve to get Aviva talked about is sort of happening and the Insurance Times new format… with extra bite…? well everyone is talking about it.

And when I meet Ellen I’ll smile (not obediently) look excited about the name change plus anything else she wants and I’ll talk until the cows come home!