Stefanie Altman, Bold Penguin Director of Marketing : 

1. We saw a noticeable shift in the positioning of Bold Penguin at this year’s ITC event, tell us about the new direction for the brand. 

Our brand promise to simplify small commercial insurance is supported by our industry-leading platform, specifically designed to support all players in the space. People know our name, our colors, our logos, and our brand, but when I joined Bold Penguin I noticed a disconnect between our brand and our products. And that’s very typical for a company the age and size of Bold Penguin–we were at a natural point to expand our message because we had built strong name recognition.

As I looked at where we could go to create a stronger awareness, there were two things that stood out to me: 1. We never really mentioned our product names, and 2. We talked a lot about us–which, again, is exactly what we needed to do to establish our brand.

So, as we moved forward, I adjusted our strategic focus–now, we do both brand marketing and product marketing, and we’re seeing positive results and qualitative feedback from people now understanding our what and not just our who. Our “Discover YOUR Bold Penguin” campaign is an extension of our new product-focused messaging that brings in our product names and value propositions to our customers, as well as connects with those customers to solve their unique problems and tell their stories.

Rapid Fire Video: 

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2. What’s the biggest challenge for maintaining and growing Brand Awareness in an evolving insurtech landscape?

It’s meeting our audience where they are. There is a mix of ages and comfort levels with technology throughout the agent base and an entirely different audience when you think about carriers or brokers. All of these groups are engaged in some of the same places, like trade publications, LinkedIn, and some blogs, but a “one size fits all” place where a brand can capture mindshare doesn’t exist.

So the challenge to grow that awareness becomes marshaling data and tailoring messaging to make sure you’re getting your brand on the right channels for each audience and then creating mental stickiness. Strategic partnerships can help, but what I think is really clutch is compelling content. Not necessarily long-form content– a great picture and caption can be compelling content, it just has to be relevant to the audience you’re trying to reach. One size fits all marketing doesn’t work anymore, even at high-level brand awareness, you have to do the testing and learning to get the right message across to the right audience in the right place.

3. How do you communicate that Bold Penguin is making the lives of agents easier and that our solution is not meant to replace, but enhance, their jobs?

We always bring the human element into how we speak about our products because our products are created to support those humans! The Bold Penguin platform solves challenges: through the Terminal, we make it possible to comparatively quote small commercial policies in a matter of minutes; with the Exchange, we help our customers find businesses to build their book, and to create revenue from out of appetite risk; our Storefront allows agents and their customers to find the perfect balance between self-service and human-touch, and Analytics increases available data, data accuracy, and profitability while making competitive analysis and product rationalization easier. 

When you can show that a product or suite of products can make a person’s work or life easier, that’s an easy message to share with the world, and our products definitely support that.

If you look at how our message has shifted over the last few months, we’re directly addressing the pain points Bold Penguin was created to ease. We’re encouraging our customers to discover their Bold Penguin, or how they make our platform work best for them. A technology feature list can feel really daunting to agents, and that’s scary, especially if you feel like you’re not especially tech-savvy or are worried about tech replacement. But our products help agents who are engaged in their business, and fundamentally they’re designed to help agents, help humans, thrive.