PIA "Choices" Campaign Available Nationally
The National Association of Professional Insurance Agents is making available to all its state and regional affiliates a TV and print advertising campaign used successfully for the past six years by PIA of Wisconsin.
The Choices advertising campaign emphasizes the value of doing business with professional insurance agents and is designed to combat ad campaigns by direct writers, some of which portray independent agents with unflattering, grotesque caricatures and claim agents add unnecessary expense to insurance products.
In one of the PIA commercials, a man picks up a telephone and asks the TV audience, "Why would you spend 15 minutes on the phone to get a quote from just one company?" He goes on to point out that customers who call a professional insurance agent can gain access to quotes from nine or 10 companies in the same amount of time.
"We designed Choices to remind consumers that you can call a PIA member and get a good quote," said Ron Von Haden, executive vice president of PIA of Wisconsin. "We want to show that an independent agent can give you lots of choices along with personal service."
At the request of the national PIA image committee, PIA of Wisconsin decided to make Choices available to any other PIA affiliate wishing to use it and not charge any licensing fees.
"With increasing competition from the direct writers -- and with some online insurance companies planning to spend as much as $60 million on advertising this year -- we thought our fellow affiliates could benefit from our experience," Von Haden said.
Network television ads supported by insurance carriers, agents and PIA form the backbone of the Choices marketing program. PIA agencies are also offered enhanced levels of participation, which include telemarketing and direct mail. They also can receive print ad slicks for their use in local community newspapers, shoppers' guides and telephone directories.
"Each PIA affiliate can decide if the Choices program fits into their own marketing efforts," said Scott Miller of Pennington, New Jersey, chairman of PIA's national image committee. "The Choices program provides the advantage of a successful PIA branding program that is already up-and-running and requires no expenditures for brand development, logo design, production of TV commercials and print ads or licensing fees.
"Our fellow PIA agents in Wisconsin are to be commended for making this program available to their PIA fellow agents in other states," Miller said.