500 ways to do great business

The Swift Awards, a national scheme recognising great local businesses, sponsored by swiftcover.com and run by Brazil, has just given its 500th award. It’s a significant milestone, and in the time that it’s taken us to identify and celebrate 500 exceptional British businesses, swiftcover.com has grown from the new kid in the insurance market to one of the UK’s most recognised brands.

When Brazil won the swiftcover.com account in 2008, the insurer needed a campaign that would appeal to consumers and influencers, whilst also driving brand awareness by generating media coverage outside of the personal finance pages, and in particular in local and regional media.

So, we created the Swift Awards; a PR campaign with, at its heart, a business awards scheme designed to recognise, support and reward local businesses that deliver quick, reliable and hassle-free service, mirroring swiftcover.com’s values.

The business categories reflect swiftcover.com’s insurance products, so we search for the best garages, automotive business, travel firms and pet-related companies across the UK. The awards are judged by a swiftcover.com panel of mystery shoppers, with the award winners featuring on a business directory on the unique Swift Relief website (www.swiftrelief.co.uk), developed to showcase winning firms and allow members of the public and swiftcover.com’s own policyholders to find a great award-winning business in their area.

It’s been a huge success: we’ve visited 60 cities and spoken to thousands of businesses over the last two years to find 500 businesses; but the search continues. It’s helped swiftcover.com establish itself as a household name, so far generating more than 600 pieces of newspaper, online and radio coverage, in addition to the coverage swiftcover.com gets on its own.

To find out more about the awards, visit www.swiftrelief.co.uk

Brazil drives swiftcover.com car insurance to insurance marketing initiative of the year!

swiftcover.com has won ‘Marketing Initiative of the Year’ at the British Insurance Awards – beating off competition from the likes of Direct Line, Aviva and Churchill – for a multi-strand strategy that included an innovative social media and PR company created by Brazil.

The insurance market is saturated, so as a new entrant swiftcover.com had to stand out. As it was also the UK’s first fully internet only insurer, Brazil harnessed online to raise awareness of the company and engage with customers and influencers alike.

To support the launch of the Iggy Pop fronted campaign, which have now clocked up over 80,000 views, Brazil embarked on a social media campaign that used a Facebook page featuring great content based on the ‘Get A Life’ theme, plus a Twitter feed to seed online content and engage with customers.

Brazil also created The Swift Awards, a national campaign to find great local businesses, which was supported by Swift Relief, a hub of unique content including hints and tips, vox pop videos, an insurance jargonbuster and even a viral game, Dance Like A Rockstar, all of which generated online interest and supported traditional media relations.

Brazil’s work, along with traditional offline PR, marketing and advertising, helped boost swiftcover.com’s sales by 38.5% in 2009 and increase brand awareness by 90%.

Our Latest Tipple: Brazil develops an international social media campaign for leading whisky brand

Brazil has just been appointed to oversee a high-intensity Christmas social media campaign for the unique Penderyn Whisky, recent winners of the “European Whisky of the Year”.

The campaign has been created to create awareness and nurture sales of the award-winning Welsh whisky in the UK, US, France & Spain, and the team will be deploying a number of “new techniques” to increase the number of conversations about the brand in the run up to the busiest period for any drinks manufacturer.

Get your rocks off...

Brazil spent a day in a quarry this week, helping a journalist from the Sunday Times In Gear Magazine get to grips with Honda ATVs before he takes part in the Weston Beach Race.

Cleaner, greener boat engines

Brazil secured some more excellent primetime TV coverage for Honda again last week – talking cleaner, greener boat engines on GMTV! The story ran six times during the morning, resulting in more than four minutes national TV coverage for the client.

Iggy Pop-ular

Iggy Pop is to be named a ‘Living Legend’ later this year by the Marshall Classic Rock Roll of Honour. News of the honour mentioned his punk rock roots, hits such as Lust For Life and The Passenger, and of course his role this year in adverts for car insurer swiftcover.com, and in particularly the kerfuffle over the fact that swiftcover.com did not insure musicians when the ads first aired – they do now, by the way.

Being at the sharp-end of swiftcover.com’s PR this year, Brazil has seen first hand the response to Iggy’s advert, some of which has been ‘mixed’, to put it politely. Some fans are outraged, suggesting that Pop has sold-out, whilst others actually get the irony of the proto-punk rocker selling car insurance.

Some woefully uneducated people don’t know who the man is and don’t like the fact that Iggy’s naked torso is invading their prime time TV. It is unclear whether they are jealous of the 62 year old former hell raiser’s muscled physique, or just desperate to get on with the next episode of Midsomer Murders.

The controversy has been the subject of much media comment and opinion on artists selling-out and the art of selling, citing everything from ex-Sex Pistol John Lydon’s butter advert to American comedian Bill Hick’s oft-quoted: "If you do an advert then you are off the artistic register forever."

Recently comedian Sean Hughes included a rant in his stand-up show about Iggy selling-out by selling car insurance, although Hughes was even more unhappy about Stephen Fry doing the voice-over for the red telephone in another insurance ad. This was all included in a newspaper story about Hughes’ string of London dates, presumably to drum up ticket sales?

Being slagged off by a comedian must rank as some achievement in seeping into the public conscious, so as far as swiftcover.com advertising is concerned, that’s job done. Sales for swiftcover.com have increased substantially this year, partly as a result of the adverts, and many of those who have moaned about the ads have been prompted to check out swiftcover.com and have been swayed by the low cost insurance on offer.

Iggy himself isn’t really bothered, telling French news that he enjoyed the ads and didn’t give a sh*it about the controversy, whilst his latest album Preliminaires has sold better than any Iggy Pop album of recent times.

And now, even better than being named a Living Legend, Iggy as been immortalised as a Lego Rock God in the new Rock Band video game.

So, with all this activity and coverage, Iggy Pop must be inline for some kind of award as man of the year, and the inside word is that the man himself is the happiest he has been for years. Anybody that has a problem with this should take Iggy’s advice in the swiftcover.com ad, and ‘Get a Life’!

Introducing Alfie

For a preview of the new 118 118 advert click here