Welcome AIPAGIA Members!

On March 17th 2012, I had the honor and privilege to present to a very special industry group, Aipagia.  While my attendance was brief, the time I spent with the members of this industry group was incredible. It was very reminiscent of my past participation at similar conferences when I was a member of AIPAGIA back in the late 1990s.  There was a tremendous amount of energy, collaboration, collegiality and idea exchange at the conference that you tend to miss in larger Insurance industry venues and forums.

I would like to to take this opportunity to thank AIPAGIA President Michael Barron, Gloria Grove, George Bode, and Tom Koch for inviting me to present to the AIPAGIA membership my thoughts and views on the Major Trends, new realities and opportunities that exist in the affinity insurance industry. In addition, I’d like to thank Al Drowne of Axis Capital, who worked with me on the original  whitepaper focused on this topic. And last but not least, Gillian Johnson of Comperemedia for sharing her extremely valuable study on top 5 bank direct mail volumes research report.

Also, thanks and kudos to Dave Brennan, Tom Bohde and the rest of the Met Life team in sponsoring this event along with what turned out to be a major contribution they made towards the success of this conference.

Presentation Topic: The Changing Face Of Affinity Group Distribution

The insurance industry and the traditional affinity group Business model is undergoing profound change and being redefined by four primary forces:

1.  Fatigue (marketing, product and service) Distribution, Technology and Competitive pressures forcing business model transformation.
2. Consumer behaviors that require new, relevant marketing, sales and integrated distribution approaches.
3. The blurring of the lines between insurance products and services.
4.  Legal and regulatory challenges – in addition to major reforms, there are many legal challenges designed to protect the consumer privacy and ensure equity (through minimum loss ratio requirements, etc.).

Click here to download the presentation

Research Tools, Materials and Videos

At the top of this blog is a section entitled “Useful Links (to online resources)” i.e.links to many research sites that I use to track Major Trends. Another tool I use is “Google Alerts” that I set-up for tracking trends on such topics as: Life Insurance, Group Insurance, Healthcare, Health Insurance, Disability Insurance, Healthcare reform and many of the companies I follow.

On the right-hand side of this blog are links to some of the many research papers and articles that I used for this presentation.

And last but not least, here are some pertinent videos on recent trends in affecting markets, business and marketing:

Here is a Wall Street Journal video on the return of 3 million manufacturing jobs aka”on-shoring”

http://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/cbsnews_player_embed.swf

Tony Hawk, Skateboarding Icon, and how he is using Twitter:

Trend Hunters.tv always has interesting trends that cross many genres including pop culture, business and communications.

Download and Read the the IBM report (See Blogroll link)

See Seth Godin’s perspective on marketing in 2012. He talks about the permanent recession, the concept of “racing towards the bottom” and the disruption occurring in advertising.

See IBM’s Take on how marketing is changing. “5 years from now you will not recognize this profession.”

Mary Meeker‘s 2011 Major Internet Trends

See a “Day in the Life of a Kiva Robot”. On March 20th 2012, Amazon.com announced that it just bought Kiva Fulfillment systems for $775 Million.

The end of the Credit Card? See the interview of Dwolla’s Milne on his Mobile Payment System.http://bloom.bg/GEklko#ooid=pqd2I4NDrwIHShd1AwEWesQJ62QtVIBK

Filed under: Accountability, AIPAGIA, Best Practices, Bill Tyson's Blog Strategy-In-Action, Business, Business Model, Business Strategy, Change, Change leadership, Customer Engagement, Customer Value Proposition, Distribution channels, Execution, Innovations, Insurance, Marketing, Mission Statements, multichannel marketing, organizational change, Product Development, RAPID Decision Making, Research, Risk, Risk Management, Strategic Plan, Strategic Risks, Strategy, The Balanced Scorecard Approach, Trends, Value Creation Tagged: AIPAGIA, Bill Tyson, Business Plans, Business Strategy, Gillian Johnson, Google Alerts, Group Insurance, Growth Strategies, IBM, LLC, Mary Meeker, Michael Barron, Organizational effectiveness, Seth Godin, SMP, Strategic Marketing Plan, Strategic Marketing Plus, Strategy Execution, Tom Koch