Ellipse brand strategy and positioning

The challenge

As a group risk insurer Ellipse provide Life, Critical Illness and Income Protection for employees, that’s paid for by their Employers and sold to them via financial intermediaries. Founded in 2009 Ellipse grew quickly by offering a unique end to end digital service proposition as ‘the digital group risk insurer’ and had a strong focus on working with SMEs.

However, 9 years later the market and Ellipse had both changed significantly. Firstly, the digital innovations they had brought into the market were now considered a hygiene factor. And secondly Ellipse had introduced some offline processes for larger clients and intermediaries who did not want a purely digital offering.

Based on their new market positioning and growth aspirations the brand needed new clarity and direction that everyone could get behind.

The approach

Step 1: Insight and immersion

To get a complete understanding of the business, market environment, and both internal and external views on what’s special about Ellipse we carried out the following:

• Sent a questionnaire to all staff
• Conducted one hour one-on-one interviews with 11 stakeholders across all areas of the business
• Analysed recent qualitative and quantitative market research
• Completed a brand positioning review of all competitors in the market

Step 2: Proposed brand strategy development

Using these insights we developed a proposed brand strategy:

Step 3: ‘Brand workshop’ with key stakeholder

We ran a workshop session where we:

• Presented the proposed brand strategy and all the insights that informed the thinking
• Held interactive group break-out sessions to critique and debate the narratives
• Came together to agree 99% of the strategy

Step 4: Brand strategy refinements

Minor refinements were made before the positioning and strategy was finalised for board sign off.

Step 5: Brand deployment

Based on the agreed strategy we developed a new brand look and feel, redesigned and developed a new website and created a range of communications.

Launch and ongoing internal initiatives were also agreed to ensure the new brand values and essence would be lived day to day throughout their business.

The results

The inclusive brand development journey ensured stakeholder input and buy in at each stage. Enabling all employees’ views to be considered and debated in a controlled environment ensured a more authentic, and therefore more powerful brand strategy, but it also meant that everyone in the business felt far more invested and part of the new brand.

Externally the new brand was also a great success. When asked, 57% of advisers said they thought the change of brand emphasis was positive, only 2% thought it was negative.

The brand relaunch was so successful that within a year of the rebrand they were bought out by AIG in 2019. So sadly the beautiful brand is no longer in existence but we’re very proud of what it helped them achieve.