Opus Insurance
Business To Business Campaign - ‘Ensuring Acquisition’ campaign for Opus Insurance
Gold Award winner, Corporate/Financial Category,
North West IPR Pride Awards 2005
Following an MBO, the management team at commercial insurance broker Opus Insurance, were fixed on preparing the streamlined business for acquisition.
Market factors meant both UK and US insurance brokers were spreading business risks by diversifying geographically and by sector.
Big global brokers like US giant and New York Stock Exchange-listed Willis Group, were eyeing UK brokers as potential acquisition targets.
Bosses at Opus knew that Willis wanted to spread their own risks by acquiring UK companies with strong regional client bases in diverse business sectors.
UK brokers with regional branches enjoying good relationships with their local media would prove irresistible to larger brokers looking for safe havens.
We were appointed in April 2004 to raise the Opus profile in the insurance sector, local and regional business media and in the business pages of national newspapers.
Evidence of strong branch presence in the regions and corporate authority in Insurance Times, Insurance Age and POST Magazine were key objectives.
Pre-appointment, PR was ad hoc. There was scepticism at board level, which was ultimately turned around. The agency developed a PR campaign to promote the nine Opus UK offices and create Opus profile nationwide as one of the UK’s leading independent suppliers of commercial insurance.
Campaign: SKV supported Opus with a comprehensive mix of product, profile and issues-led pieces, such as:
We supplied the media with a continual stream of high quality coverage focusing on new insurance product developments, technical expertise, plus regular corporate news, all of which enabled Opus to increase its share of voice nationwide.
Forging relationships with industry journalists: we set up a two-day editor tour in London and visited media offices of Insurance Age, Insurance Times, Post Magazine and Business 550 to brief editors about Opus.
Positioning the CEO as industry thought leader resulted in media approaching us to contribute to features, case studies and round tables.
Creative Ideas: We identified key times of the year when regulatory changes could be used to provide interesting issues-led PR angles, for example, changing asbestos legislation and work at height.
Issues-focused press releases were drafted and despatched to national and regional newspapers nationwide. Our use of accompanying creative photography helped further boost media coverage.
Results: Sustained media coverage in regional, national and specialist media was achieved with over 176 cuttings generated.
Opus was acquired in December 2004, sold to global insurance giant Willis, one of the world’s leading risk management and insurance intermediaries. Opus bosses attribute the company’s attractiveness to Willis as significantly enhanced due to its high media profile at all relevant levels – local, national, and sector.
Evaluation: The PR campaign from April 2004 to February 2005 resulted in a content weighted editorial value of £489,659 and a total readership value of 13,123,430.
Campaign highlights include the Asbestos ‘Duty to Manage’ activity, which secured 6,110,952 opportunities to see the Opus brand name in print media and achieved coverage in both broadsheet and compact versions of The Times.
We turned ‘just another cheque handover’ into a mini-campaign which resulted in extensive coverage for the Opus/Air Ambulance charity campaign in the target regions of Bolton, Maidstone, Southend, Aberdeen and Dorset and Somerset. In addition, HTV West - regional ITV television - filmed pre-record and live packages.
