Case study: Axa’s rebranding

The story.
In 2005, Axa, the France-based insurance provider, had just celebrated 20 years of growth and become a world market leader. Henri de Castries, chief executive, decided to launch an initiative aimed at becoming the first choice – for customers, commercial partners or employees – in its fields of insurance and asset management.

The challenge.
Axa had to differentiate itself from rivals. But the Axa brand attributes – including the brand slogan “Be Life Confident” – no longer seemed appropriate.

Claude Brunet, chief operating officer, set out to investigate how the brand might address the company’s new priorities of becoming the “preferred choice”.

Opinions of executives, customers and employees were analysed in depth by a multidisciplinary Axa Brand Spirit taskforce, which was also responsible for proposing action. In early 2008, it concluded that Axa must win customers’ trust through the core attributes of being “available”, “attentive” and “reliable”.

Ramifications.
Axa had to prove it had the attributes identified by the taskforce. This was the thinking behind a new slogan “redefining / standards”, which was launched internally through an online forum in which 55,000 employees participated worldwide.

Further challenges.
In 2007, the Axa brand was perceived as cold and did not inspire trust among customers. Similarly, it had failed to resonate with employees, who did not know how to help customers be “life confident”.

Mr de Castries felt a big cultural change was needed. Executives could not implement change without empowering their teams.

The response.
The Brand Spirit taskforce was more than a marketing team. Importantly, for instance, it successfully encouraged the heads of different divisions – including senior human resources, marketing and communications executives – to collaborate with each other.

Such cross-fertilisation helped them move quickly from concepts to practical solutions. For instance, core attitudes were soon translated into customer-facing behaviours backed up by action plans and monitoring schemes. Employees were told what being available, attentive and reliable would actually mean in practice when dealing both with each other and with customers.

In addition, the Brand Spirit team suggested making the new brand flexible in order to make it adaptable to multiple business needs. For example, the “redefining / standards” motto could be tweaked easily into “redefining / healthcare”, “redefining / pensions” or “redefining / car insurance”, while having an overall theme.

What happened.
Axa Group’s own customer satisfaction index has improved each year since the rebranding was performed.

Although “redefining / standards” did not change Axa immediately into the “preferred company” it wants to become, Interbrand, the market research firm, for the first time ranked the brand first worldwide in insurance in both 2009 and 2010.

Key lessons.
First, rebranding is also about change management. It must create the right momentum among employees and include them.

Second, rebranding requires leadership. The attitudes Axa employees must adopt towards customers are the very ones they expect from their managers.

Third, a successful brand launch combines cognitive and emotional elements – the Axa brand must address the heart and the mind. While the research was very analytic, the final internal online forum of May 2008 was a highly energetic and sensitive experience for Axa. Employees were not only allowed but invited to share concerns and to provide new ideas and solutions.

Ultimately, a brand is less about a new design of marketing brochure than a mindset that is evident every time an employee deals with a customer.
- Financial Times, 9 March 2011