Aviva as a business has actually been
around for about 300 years in different
forms and different company names and
about 10 years ago we were about 50
different brand names all across the
world world across our different markets
and we realized that that was a pretty
inefficient way of operating as a
business and that by combining together
to act more as one business throughout
the world and having it one brand name
to sort of signify that unity around the
world it was pretty critical to start to
adopt I'm one single name
the name of Eva didn't come from a
business it wasn't that we decided to
take the name from one market and apply
it everywhere we actually found new name
so we went to research a new name that
could work in every market that meant
positive things but also didn't really
mean anything
would any of this have happened to me
but is still being Richard Starkey way
Negroes people know Walter Willis have
got to play the leading man sometimes a
change in name is more than a change of
me sometimes it's a chance to show the
world you've always wanted to be the
Aviva name first appeared I think in
2002 and that's when Aviva PLC was
formed and that's when we started being
listed as a Viva on the London Stock
Exchange and our smaller market started
to adopt name Aviva from that point on
however we left our three largest
businesses therefore our three largest
brands they kept their original names so
they they were norwich union in the UK
hibernian in ireland and commercial
union in poland so we left those three
brands all with their original names and
it was only in 2009 2010 were those
brands finally migrated to the Aviva
name the reason hibernian norwich union
and commercial union in ireland UK and
poland kept their names was because they
were the largest brands the largest
businesses and therefore they carried
the most risk to move from their names
to the new Aviva name however in 2007 we
had a new CEO Andrew moths and he one of
his new things really was introducing
this new vision for the business which
was about Warren Aviva which is about
truly harnessing the power of having one
brand name all over the world
the logo I think may originally have
referenced an old norwich union logo and
but to be honestly it was something that
was created for Aviva very much thinking
about the future of the business overall
the biggest risk when changing your name
is that you're going to lose people
along the way that they're not going to
know that you've changed your name or
they're going to be confused so what you
need to do is be very clear with
communication all the way along the way
to mitigate that risk by telling people
that you're going to change your name
and just trying to be as clear as
possible
we announced it to the city first of all
then we introduce some advertising to
tell people were going to change our
name then we wrote to all of our
different customers so they all had a
specific communication telling them
about the name change and then more
advertising talking about the name
change and then additional advertising
talking about what kind of brand Aviva
was going to be and therefore what they
should expect from a brand experience of
viva
the benefits of having one name all over
the world are manifold Spellacy I think
a big one is about having one brand name
although all over the world makes us
appear as warm brown one business one
force to be reckoned with all over the
world I think you know with the world's
fifth largest insurance company people
tend to perceive that we're very UK
heavy and we are forty percent of our
businesses here but a lot of our
business is elsewhere and I think it was
an opportunity to make ourselves make
Aviva see much more of a global player
similarly I think it was an opportunity
to revitalize the brand I think our
previous legacy brands were very strong
I'm talking specifically hear about
norwich union hibernian commercial union
because the other businesses has already
changed the Aviva name but they were
very strong but they were very and seen
generally as quite old and old fashioned
and quite stayed almost and you know
we're an insurance company that's a
that's a natural preconception so I
think actually it's an opportunity to
revitalize the brand and to give more
energy and yeah vitality a 222 Aviva as
the perceptions of Aviva as a business
and obviously there are also big cost
efficiencies for having one name all
over the world in lots of different ways
just means that we are able to really
make the most of our buying power make
the most of our selling power make the
most of systems and operations and
websites and all these different reasons
why it makes so much more sense to have
one name one way of doing things all
throughout the world
I think one of the biggest challenges in
managing a brand for financial service
company versus a project that you pick
up in a supermarket is that particularly
with insurance actually is that your
interactions with that brand of very few
so if you're a tin of beans you know
people go into the supermarket and they
pick up that tin of beans no once a week
they eat that tin of beans once or twice
a week they have much more interactions
with it financial services particularly
insurance what you make one renewal a
year or you know it's just the statement
that you receive in the post the rest of
the time we're not interacting with the
brand or when people do interact with us
it's when they're calling to make a
claim or make a complaint or a square
there why their rates have gone down so
it it's that's the biggest challenge is
that how can we build a brand with very
few level numbers of numbers of
interactions and how can we help it to
be a very positive experience when
actually dealing an insurance company is
quite transactional boring thing
you
I think the risk of rebranding a
well-known companies it's well known so
you're going away from something that's
a staple something that you know
everyone knows about and then going to
something completely new I think the
reason they were rebranding this case
was because they had different
businesses and different places around
the world which is something I didn't
realize when I knew norwich union had
changed that am I never really
understood why and I'm one of their
clients I want their customers so I
think in that case it was trying to bind
together a company with lots of
different names and different identities
in different places which that makes a
certain amount of sense it's like we're
decorating a house just just because it
looks nice doesn't mean it can't use a
better coat of paint if I go abroad I
like to know that my company my bank my
my sort of my restaurant anything that I
like so much I can go get the exact same
thing in a different country