The Prudential Insurance Company of America

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The Prudential Insurance Company of America

751 Broad St.
Newark, New Jersey 07102-2992
USA
Telephone: (800) 778-2255
Web site: www.prudential.com

BE YOUR OWN ROCK CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

When Elizabeth Krupnick arrived at Prudential Insurance Company of America in June 1994 to take over as chief communications officer, she inherited advertising that she called "mediocre at best." She also inherited one of the most identifiable icons in advertising: the rock. Her mission, as she conceived it, was to modernize Prudential's advertising without abandoning the equity it had invested in the rock. "Only an idiot would give up one of the world's most powerful icons," she said. She intended to distinguish Prudential from typical insurance advertising, which she thought tended to be "staid, corny, and jingoistic."

In 1995 Prudential chose an ad agency whose reputation was the antithesis of typical insurance advertising. Fallon McElligott of Minneapolis had established a name for itself on the success of its calculated risk taking. Insurance companies generally wanted to reduce risk to a minimum, but Krupnick wanted to push the envelope with advertising that was riveting and attention getting. With its renowned creativity, Fallon McElligott was perhaps the most appropriate choice to fulfill this goal. Bill Westbrook, Fallon's creative director and president, fulfilled Krupnick's mission of updating Prudential's image without losing its heritage by transforming the tired tag line, "Get a piece of the rock," into "Live well; make a plan; be your own rock." Krupnick called the transformation a piece of genius.

In another bold move, Westbrook and his associates sought out real Prudential clients who illustrated the new tag line instead of using actors in the commercials. After a lengthy nationwide search, they ended up with a handful of mavericks over 50 years old who had lived according to the principles of the new campaign. The finished spots, which began running during the 1996 Super Bowl, were six commercials featuring, among others, a former prima ballerina with the Israeli Ballet, a retired jazz musician from Connecticut, a former senator from South Carolina, and a holistic doctor from Colorado who mused in the commercial, "Somehow, on some deeper level, we're responsible for what happens to us."

The campaign, however, suffered a premature demise when Prudential hired Roger Lawson as executive vice president of marketing. As a result of Lawson's decision to create an in-house agency to handle advertising, Krupnick resigned her post, and Fallon resigned its account. Both Krupnick and Fallon regretted the lost opportunity to witness the "Be Your Own Rock" campaign run its course, but observers respected their decisions to maintain their professional integrity and creative independence.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Prudential had devised its traditional tag line "Get a piece of the rock" to be an assurance of stability and security for its customers. Prudential's vice president of corporate advertising Mary Lou Sack explained the history behind the tag line switch: "Our stance was always: lean on us, rely on us. We're still there for people, but people are really wanting to take more control for themselves of their finances, their life choices, of everything." In the 1990s a pervasive distrust of large institutions developed, especially the insurance industry. In the mid-1990s the insurance industry was the target of major lawsuits by several companies charging market misconduct, which affected not only their bottom lines but their entire corporate culture, including their advertising.

At Prudential the scandal had its origins in three distinct arenas. At the center was the Direct Investment Group of Prudential Bache Securities, which had been selling billions of dollars worth of dubious investments. More peripheral was a churning scandal, whereby Prudential agents convinced policyholders to refinance smaller policies into larger policies for higher dividends without informing them of the inherent glass ceiling. Finally, whistle blowers within Prudential filed suits charging that they were disciplined and even fired when they tried to point out Prudential's wrongdoings—such as churning—to their supervisors. In October 1994 Prudential Securities avoided criminal indictment by admitting fraud. Lawyers representing approximately 10.7 million policyholders claimed more than $1 billion in damages and in the end negotiated an open-ended settlement wherein Prudential agreed to pay the policyholders more than $410 million. The three largest life and health insurers—Prudential, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and New York Life Insurance Company, or the "Big Three," as they were called—paid a combined $575 million in settlements. Lost business due to flagging consumer confidence cost these companies even more money than the price of the settlements; they fell short of their projected sales of $198.57 billion by approximately $72.46 billion in 1995.

Prior to this scandal, insurance companies could safely assume that people would seek their services as a matter of course, and thus they could afford mediocre advertising. Traditionally, in fact, insurance advertising used two strategies that relied on negation instead of affirmation: it either patronized consumers or made them feel guilty. After the scandal, insurers scrambled to recover from the impact of the suits, both internally by restructuring their businesses and externally by redefining public perception through more aggressive and memorable marketing. At Prudential Krupnick decided to redirect consumers' distrust by focusing on how the company could help them achieve their own financial goals.

TARGET MARKET

Prudential's spot entitled "The Grandfather" depicted the 78-year-old former South Carolina senator looking out of place on the beach in a business suit while his grandchildren buried him in sand up to his neck. The joyousness of the kids' actions contrasted with the somberness of the mock act of burial. The soundtrack heightened this sense of contrast, as the senator's serious contemplations on his financial philosophy were accompanied by a lighthearted reggae beat, trumpeter Baba Brooks' 1965 recording of "Teenage Ska." These contrasts helped bridge the gap between the message—securing a retirement, which one associates with old age, and the target market, thirty- to fifty-year olds still young enough to plan for their future. Fallon McElligott's senior producer Bruce Wellington defined the challenge of the "Be Your Own Rock" campaign: to get "thirtysomethings to think that planning for their future can be cool." Fallon capitalized on the mood of ska music—a precursor to reggae with a much faster beat—by saddling its hip, upbeat sounds onto what otherwise would have been a very morbid theme. This music would have fallen on deaf ears if it had been targeted at an older audience, but most 30- and 40-somethings appreciated the ska style, even if they didn't recognize the song itself.

Krupnick explained the efficacy of this strategy of portraying happily fulfilled and successful older people as a means of appealing to those younger in life. "The surprising thing was that these ads tested exceptionally well among young people, better than they did among old people. They looked at these older people as rocks, as role models. They are people who have survived into retirement and are living fun, joyful lives." With life expectancy rising, insurance consumers in their middle years worried less about dying too soon and more about outliving their own assets and Social Security. Scare tactics thus seemed less effective to Westbrook than a more positive approach to financial planning. "Let's make it a joyful campaign," Westbrook suggested.

While fear of death spoke primarily to those actively contemplating their advancing years, the idea of enjoying life spoke to a much broader audience. Krupnick defined Prudential's target market much more broadly than Wellington's "thirtysomethings." Since Prudential maintained over 50 million clients—which amounted to one in five Americans—Krupnick half joked that Prudential targeted "anyone with a pulse." This comment seemed less of a jest taking into account that the commercials were not life insurance ads but rather brand advertising meant to raise the visibility of Prudential as a whole, with all of its services that covered financial concerns "from the cradle to the grave."

COMPETITION

The other two members of the so-called Big Three—Met Life and New York Life-were Prudential's main competition. Between 1987 and 1990 all three posted significant increases in sales: New York Life peaked in 1987 with a 59.9 percent increase in sales, while both Met Life and Prudential peaked in 1989 with sales increases of 60.92 percent and 41.84 percent, respectively. The market misconduct scandal, which first surfaced in August 1993 when a group of Florida nurses charged that Met Life agents sold them life insurance in the guise of retirement plans, hit all of the Big Three in 1994. That year Met Life's sales plummeted 38.33 percent compared with the previous year, while New York Life's sales fell 31.49 percent and Prudential's dropped 11.56 percent. These decreases continued in 1995 for Met Life and Prudential (which fell another 22.58 percent); New York Life, which did not admit any wrongdoing as Prudential and Met Life did, recouped its lost ground with a 36.82 percent gain in 1995.

Insurance companies reacted to the scandal by setting up new departments devoted to complying with stricter regulations. At the same time, their marketing strategies reflected a transformed approach in response to a transformed marketplace. Advertising campaigns exited the realm of the abstract and firmly grounded themselves in the pragmatic. Met Life's new tag line promised to help in "making sense of it all," while John Hancock Life Insurance Company grounded its approach in "real life" with "real answers." While the scandal created hardship for both the insurers and the insured, one positive outcome was the reevaluation and revitalization of an industry where changes were long overdue, especially in terms of marketing.

MARKETING STRATEGY

Krupnick decided to take a considered approach to revising Prudential's faltering image after the scandal. Internally she implemented a sweeping campaign to simplify the language and look of the company, from reducing the use of jargon to clarifying the names and functions of subsidiary arms of the company to consistent use of an updated rock logo on company literature. This simplification and updating carried over into the advertising. Before brainstorming for new marketing ideas, Prudential and Fallon McElligott conducted extensive market research to assess both the damage done by the scandal and the attitude toward insurance companies. Surprisingly the research suggested that the scandal had done far less damage to Prudential's name than suspected; however, the scandal did solidify consumer's attitudes, which had been shifting away from reliance on external support such as insurance policies and toward self-reliance. Consumers no longer wanted to lean on institutions that they felt they could not fully trust, but they did realize that they could not be fully self-sufficient—they would still require the services of institutions such as the insurance industry, but on their own terms, not the industry's.

Westbrook captured the spirit of the self-reliance trend with the transformation of the tag line into "Be your own rock." This move alone could not reestablish consumer trust; all aspects of the campaign would have to reflect a commitment to integrity. Hence, the decision to cast actual customers instead of actors. "Insurance agencies in the past have used actors and passed them off as real people, but you know they're actors," Bill Westbrook explained. "And historically when using real people, concepts in this category have been intimidating and scary." Westbrook tried a different approach, taking a chance on finding older people who illustrated his tag line. Several casting directors interviewed over 200 candidates nationwide, narrowing the field down to 12 before making the final decision on the six youthful older people to be profiled in the commercials.

Fallon enlisted the services of director Jeffery Plansker of bicoastal/international Propaganda Films, who supported the use of nonactors to stress Prudential's integrity. Using nonactors represented more risk, but that risk paid off. Westbrook explained, "We wanted a chance for magic and were willing to take the risk in order to create some chill bumps, and something we'd never seen before." Plansker echoed Westbrook, adding that their strategy allowed for "unexpected surprises." This unpredictability enhanced the sense of candor in the spots, which supported Prudential's goal of creating trust through truth telling.

DIRTY SCOTCH

Fallon McElligott's president and creative director Bill Westbrook personally interviewed the people who were profiled in the six "Be Your Own Rock" commercials. Since the interviews involved a lot of reflection and retrospection, emotions ran high and stories frequently ended in tears. Having developed a deep level of intimacy with his subjects, Westbrook cried along with them as they recounted moments with pride or regret. One man described his main vice—"dirty scotch," a combination of milk and scotch whiskey. When this conversation got too emotional, the man suggested that he and Westbrook take time out for a dirty scotch.

OUTCOME

The "Be your own rock" campaign did not live long enough to produce quantifiable results. Krupnick was prepared to follow multiple indicators to track the success or failure of the ads, but she didn't have the opportunity to gather sufficient data. In the absence of quantitative research results, Krupnick reported "fabulous" qualitative and anecdotal evidence; Prudential executives and agents alike reportedly loved the campaign. In 1997 two spots from the campaign were chosen as television finalists by the One Show. A group of advertising and marketing executives chosen by Newsday to evaluate ads broadcast during the 1996 Super Bowl were divided over the Prudential spots—some found them "refreshing," while others found them "confusing." When asked what work he was most proud of, Fallon McElligott cofounder Pat Fallon replied, "The work we did for Prudential. When you think of how difficult that was to sell through the process and how strategically brilliant it was and how well it was executed, that's awesome." Walking away from the Prudential account in 1996 was a devastating experience for Fallon, but the assertion of creative integrity may have compensated for the loss in revenues in the long run. Largely on the strength of the "Be your own rock" campaign, Fallon McElligott was named agency of the year in 1996 by Adweek and Shoot, two of the major advertising trade magazines.