Prepare Ad Campaign To Tout Industry, Boost Business Climate

Feeling under-appreciated and overlooked, Connecticut's insurance industry is launching a new advertising campaign to improve the business climate for insurers and tout the ways they improve residents' lives.

In a state that calls itself the nation's insurance capital, some people don't even like to think about insurance, and others complain that the industry has too much sway over public officials.
 
But 11 insurance companies disagree and will spend $500,000 in the first year of a statewide "Insure Connecticut's Future" campaign, which is expected to kick off Sept. 10. The companies formed a nonprofit association under the same name to conduct the campaign. It will feature newspaper ads, a new website that's already up at www.bestpolicy4ct.com, and an economic impact study on the industry.

The campaign isn't aimed just at the General Assembly and other officials to improve the likelihood that they'll pass favorable legislation. The insurers also hope the campaign will encourage the state to spend more on promoting the industry, help improve morale among insurance workers and make educators more attuned to the skills and knowledge that insurers need in employees.

In addition, the companies want to illustrate to everyone - from consumers to the vendors that serve insurers - the industry's importance to the economy and quality of life in Connecticut.

"We have to make sure our state is hospitable to this industry," not just to protect jobs here, but also to attract more, said Ramani Ayer, chairman and chief executive of The Hartford Financial Services Group.

Connecticut has been "besieged" by other states that are trying to persuade insurers and other companies to locate jobs within their own borders, Ayer said.

The industry is still alive and well in Connecticut, but "the industry really feels like they dropped the ball the last 20 years in communicating that news and educating people on an ongoing basis," said Tom Bradley, vice president and executive director of public relations at Cronin and Company Inc., the Glastonbury firm that is handling the campaign.

Ayer and Brian MacLean, chief operating officer at The St. Paul Travelers Co., got discussions going last year about a campaign, and other companies supported the idea. They are Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Connecticut, The Phoenix Cos., ConnectiCare, Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co., Lincoln National, MassMutual, Prudential and Genworth Financial Inc.

CIGNA Corp. says it isn't helping to fund the campaign because the company limits ad spending "to areas where we can demonstrate national thought leadership on major health issues." The company has targeted seven "breakthrough" markets for 2006, and Hartford isn't one of them.

Ayer said there was no single trigger that sparked the Connecticut campaign, but rather a long-range view that a healthier environment for the industry would help it grow.

Robert F. Flynn, executive director of the Insurance and Financial Services Cluster - a state-corporate partnership to foster the industries - believes that disappointing results in the General Assembly have helped galvanize insurers.

This year, like last year, for instance, a proposal died that would have had Connecticut join a new multi-state commission that insurers say would streamline regulation of new life insurance and annuity products. More than 26 states have voted to join the panel, which would also review rates for disability and long-term care insurance.

The new ad campaign aims to create a more grateful climate, one more open to meeting insurers' needs.

"There's a lack of appreciation as to what insurance brings to our economy, so what we're trying to do is explain the piece that insurance plays, the critical piece," said Flynn, who helped provide content for the ad campaign.

One of the campaign's three black-and-white ads shows a youngster reading a book on a public library floor and notes that the taxes paid by insurers help improve libraries, schools, hospitals and roads in Connecticut. It also says the industry employs more than 65,000 people and that each insurance job creates 15 more jobs in other businesses.

Another ad says insurers contribute more than $20 million a year to Connecticut charities, including the arts, education and health programs, an amount representing about 25 percent of Connecticut giving by insurers' corporate foundations. The ad also cites volunteerism by insurance company employees and says, "Thousands of people work in Connecticut's insurance industry. But some of their best work is done outside the office."

The ads will run at least weekly, sometimes twice a week, in daily Connecticut newspapers and in Hartford and Fairfield County business journals through October, Bradley said. The companies might consider TV and online advertising for next year, he said.

If budgeting allows, the group might do a survey of public awareness of the industry's impact and track that over time, Bradley added.

Some of the 11 insurers are looking to the ad campaign to help their own employees feel better about their industry, company and jobs.

"If the general perception out there is that the insurance industry is not a growing, healthy, thriving, important, significant part of the economy, then that's incorrect and it's also demoralizing" to people inside the companies, Bradley said.

Some of the initial $500,000 in spending is for the Connecticut Economic Resource Center in Rocky Hill to conduct an economic impact study. It will update data on the industry, compare its reach in Connecticut with other states, and get a sense of what kinds of jobs will be needed for the industry's future growth, Flynn said.

"We were number one," Ayer said, referring to Connecticut's historical reputation as the insurance capital. "We've got to recapture that." 

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By DIANE LEVICK, Courant Staff Writer

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