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Aviva is trying to get its hands on a shedload of cash called a 'landed estate' made up of retained profits from some of its investment policies over the past 20 plus years.  A long process of negotiating how much to give to policy holders; how much to give to shareholders and how much to keep back for future payout needs.  The company appointed Claire Spottiswode as the independent voice of the policyholders, calling her an 'advocate'.

This post is not about the work she's been doing (excellent in case you are curious) but the amazingly well handled communications that her office has created via her communications director, Jonathan Haslam .

Working with a complex situation where financial negotiations are being carried on and the general public are not very interested in the detail except where it directly affects their personal policies is a tricky communications brief.

Here's what they have done very well

1. Communicate regularly to the public audience using web, print and email media
2. Provide a full set of links to public websites writing about the negotiations – mainly newspapers
3. Clearly separate the voice of Aviva from the voice of the Advocate

I suspect that concealed behind the communications published are some angry exchanges between the protagonists, some moments of apparently gross unfairness and some mis-interpretations by journalists.  These have never been glossed over – all treated seriously – and clear articulation of the Advocates position has been made.

If you have a services brand would you consider appointing a 'Customer Advocate'?

if you want to use customer loyalty and brand advocates as part of your marketing strategy, having the customers' voice articulated by a named person or team may encourage customers to speak out publicly and can help to align the brand to its audience.
Here's how - 

• Name the person and publicise their appointment
• Make it easy for customers to state their points of view publicly
• Give equal weight to the Advocate's voice as the customer.  This could be a careful graphic design choice showing summaries of forum threads on a home page.
• Enable face to face meetings between customers and the Advocate.

If you are an agency, the particular job of the client advocate would include

• Reviewing marketing communications promises and finding whether past and present clients agree with the statements
• Be on the pitch team as an internal voice to challenge the agency before presenting to the client team
• Undertake the post-pitch analysis and campaign wrap-up review with the client side team
• Have authority / seniority within the agency to make personnel and process changes needed to keep the client satisfied, loyal and repeat business coming

Anyone with experience of creating a customer champion or advocate that can add in some negative points or things to watch out for from both agency and client side?

       
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