Joseph Gross: The Allianz brand is a significant global brand and is one of the biggest German brands. We are one of the best improvers in the Interbrand Best Global Brands index, which shows that the Allianz brand is becoming ever stronger. This is certainly unusual, as the tendency in these times of financial crisis is simply to regard all banks and insurance companies with scepticism, with no differentiation, making it all the more impressive that the value of the Allianz brand has increased.
Allianz brand ever stronger
In a peer comparison carried out by independent experts, the Allianz brand was a strong contender. Were you surprised?
Joseph Gross: "We want our customers to trust us and recommend us to others – and they do"
What makes the Allianz brand so valuable?
Joseph Gross: Allianz stands for security, solidity and reliability. These values are real, and our employees and customer advisors constantly strive to live them to the full. We want our customers to trust us and recommend us to others – and they do. For several years now we have been using the Net Promoter Score (NPS), based on customers' likelihood to recommend our company, as one of the key indicators of customer satisfaction. And our scores are constantly improving. The good Interbrand ranking along with receiving the CMO Award tells us that we are moving in the right direction.
So market management is more than just publishing advertisements and creating campaigns, then?
Joseph Gross: That is still a part of our work, but it is only one aspect. Our subsidiaries have developed traditional marketing into true market management. Now our colleagues responsible for the core business, i.e. the actuaries, loss adjusters, representatives and customer advisors, see the Market Management team as an important partner rather than just as "the people who make adverts." We conduct market research and address such issues as customer segmentation, customer loyalty and customer value.
So how do you ensure that over 150,000 employees in more than 70 countries all have the same understanding of what the Allianz brand means, even though some of them are involved in completely different business areas?
Joseph Gross: : Insurance and asset management are not a consumer good like soft drinks, for example, so that does make it more difficult to get people to identify with the brand. But as I said earlier, Allianz is a long-established company in which our employees really do live out values such as security, service orientation and reliability in their daily dealings with customers – whichever country they are in. These values are central to how the Allianz brand is being positioned, worldwide.
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