How CG Created A Unified Brand Across Numerous Island Nations
Christina Sgobba is a Senior Marketing Manager for the Coralisle Group (CG), a leading insurer in the Caribbean. With a passion for branding, Christina was brought on board to implement a massive rebranding initiative and drive the growth of this new brand across existing territories as well as consolidating the brand into 14 new markets through an acquisition within the region.
Christina grew up in the United States and worked in marketing in New York City before meeting her husband in Bermuda and relocating to the island, which she described as a radical change. Before joining CG in 2020, Christina established her own brand studio, which helped numerous small businesses achieve their branding goals and stand out in competitive markets.
The Continuum talked to Christina about the challenges of creating a unified brand across numerous island nations, each with its own culture and identity.
You were brought on in 2020 when CG started working with Chemistry to do a complete rebrand and new marketing strategy. Can you please tell us a little bit about that process? What was the starting point?
CG has actually been around for over 60 years. It started as a small motor insurer in Bermuda. Over the years, the company grew significantly. It added product lines and began covering people in more countries. Now we have personal insurance lines; home, car, and life but also corporate and commercial lines, health insurance, casualty insurance, and pension services. As part of the expansion, the company has grown over the past 20 years through the acquisition of smaller insurers with their own brand, and we knew it was time to unite them all together. We wanted to illustrate to the staff and clients that we were stronger together and create a cohesive brand that could tell the same story across the region.
I was approached by CG as they were about to take on this massive rebrand. It was such an exciting opportunity for me as a marketer. When you live in Bermuda, accessibility to rebrands that are international in scope don't happen every day. There was part of me that was, to be honest, not too excited about insurance, but then I looked at the American model of marketing for insurance, and it's actually pretty fun. I thought this was an opportunity to make this product sexy and work with a company that was in an expansion mode.
You’ve done several campaigns since then; do you have a favorite or one that you think particularly resonated with your customers?
Part of our rebrand was an updated tagline: “Good like that.” With the help of Chemistry, our Atlanta-based ad agency, we created a bit of a formula: we’d highlight something unrelated to insurance that wasn’t good and then circle back to how we were not like that at all. So, we had ads that said:
“We’re like the sock that doesn’t get lost in the laundry. In other words, we won’t disappear on you.”
“We’re like the doctor that doesn't have bad handwriting. In other words, we make things clear and easy to understand.”
“We’re like a Sunday morning where you don't have anywhere you need to be. In other words, we go the extra mile so you can rest easy.”
Remember, people don't need an insurer until something goes wrong, and that’s when they’re most grateful to have a company that is easy to work with. This concept has a million legs: we’ve talked about in-laws who show up unannounced, colleagues who steal your lunch, or, my personal favorite, the boyfriend who still has his ex's name as his password. It's an amazing campaign to carry our tagline, and I feel like it’s one that we can leverage for years to come.
“We lean into this sense of community in our advertising and the commonalities that make all of these countries and cultures similar.”
CG operates in a number of places – mostly islands from Bermuda to the Bahamas to Barbados. All of them have their own culture, their own politics, and their own identity. How do you address the challenge of having such a diverse audience of consumers?
Every single island has its own flavor, its own set of nuances based on its culture and history. Curacao was a Dutch Caribbean island, Bermuda is still very British-influenced, and you have Indian influences in Trinidad.
The islands are very different from one another, and each country is quite proud of their differences. So, rather than hyper-focusing on the differences that could alienate one group over the other, we choose to focus on the things that we have in common, like family, community, and relationships. When you live on an island, you’re isolated by geography, and you really need to rely on your community in so many ways. For example, Amazon Prime is not an option for us, we’re not getting anything in a day or two, and it’s impossible for the island to stock everything. We’re all very networked so that we can call friends and friends of friends and see if anyone has seen what we’re looking for somewhere on the island or if anyone is going off island and could pick it up. We lean into this sense of community in our advertising and the commonalities that make all of these countries and cultures similar.
It’s funny; a lot of people think of insurance as technical and maybe a little boring, but as you said, it can be sexy. In the US, we’ve had long-running campaigns that get a lot of attention, like the Geico gecko and Flo from Progressive. Why do you think these ads resonate?
At the end of the day, people want stories, and these brand characters are storytellers. People don't want to be lectured about what they need to buy or how they need to buy it; they want a story and have the information wrapped somewhere in that story. Whether it's Mayhem or Jake from Allstate or Flo and her bazillion different family members, they're all telling stories. When you look at the statistics, it's incredible what these characters have done for sales and for brand recognition. At this point, are you really an insurance company in the States if you don't have a brand character?
“People don't want to be lectured about what they need to buy or how they need to buy it; they want a story and have the information wrapped somewhere in that story.”
You recently launched your own character, Aunt Angie. She’s the first brand character in the Caribbean space; what made you want to do this, and what do you hope people get from her?
Brand characters haven’t really come to the Caribbean yet, but we loved the idea of them because they become recognizable and end up as both brand ambassadors and brand educators. Insurance is this intangible thing that can seem complicated. We don't want our clients to be purchasing blindly and not understand the products that they're getting. What better way to educate them than with a brand character?
So, we created Aunt Angie. As I mentioned earlier, the people in the region are very community-focused. It’s common for children to grow up calling a lot of women Aunt or Auntie, whether they’re actually a parent’s sibling or a close friend of the family. Aunt Angie is familiar. She’s your wild family member who's lived a million lives and has many unbelievable stories to tell about her wacky adventures. But she’s also the one you go to for advice, and in this case, she’s going to tell you about the nuances of insurance and why you need it. The goal is for consumers to see that Angie’s stories are complicated, but the insurance isn't.
Aunt Angie is fabulous and blinged out. She's crazy and wonderful, and you can't help but love her. We've found that she resonated really well with a lot of people. Chemistry did an amazing job of developing the brand persona within her, and we’re really proud of her. She's going to be a brand ambassador that will educate our clients for years to come.
What’s next for CG?
If you think about all of the expertise and knowledge and talent that's been built over the 60 years and then give that a brand makeover that matches the quality of the products and services, you've got some potential for greatness. In our legacy territories, we're three years in on the new brand, and in our new territories, we’re just about a year old. It’s still the very beginning of the brand story for CG. We've been making amazing strides because of the boldness of the marketing tactics that we have delivered in these markets, and there's still a long way to go.
CG is a company that's constantly growing, evolving, and looking to be the best that it can be, which is one of the reasons I joined the company. I'm excited to be part of the journey.
July 19, 2023
