Liberty Mutual's Paul Alexander on Branding

Last month, Paul Alexander, CMO at Liberty Mutual, a Fortune 100 insurance company, spoke at the Ad Club's CMO Breakfast, and said some interesting points about branding and marketing in a social media era.

Here are some key points to Alexandar's approach:

• The definition of death is a toilet paper focus group....Insurance is often seen as a commodity business. But you can still have fun.
• Successful marketing is about partnership (with PR and design firms as well as ad agencies), publishing (content) and PR.
• We've gone from a lean back and absorb information to seek out information, where you can keep out content. That means that companies need to take a different approach to marketing. Otherwise, you can be locked out.
• It's no longer about protecting the brand. It's about projecting the brand, where important qualities are find-ability and share-ability.
• You have to try and improve your batting average, knowing that you're not going to get a hit every time out.
• You need to engage via social media and to take a cross-platform approach.

o You don't need to use every element, but there should be some cross-over with logo architecture, color palette, and sell line.

In the interest of transparency, Liberty Mutual is now a client but was not at the time of the CMO Breakfast, which was open to the public. Additionally, we do not work directly for Alexander. However, I think his points about branding are interesting and worth posting.