"We believe partnerships are likely to create more buzz and genuine consumer engagement than TV ads."
- Ed Axon, Chief Growth Officer at LifeSearch
How consumers choose brands, their buying behaviour, attitudes, and engagement are shifting dramatically and at an incredible pace. Younger generations are experiencing non-linear lives - no longer following the well-trodden path of university, first job, buying a home, getting married, and starting a family.
This doesn’t mean their need for protection is less than in previous generations, but the demands for protection and what it needs to do are evolving.
"This goes for distribution as well - how the industry reaches & engages with younger consumers."
To protect more people properly, LifeSearch has developed its PoweredBy proposition which offers flexible ‘digital when you want it, human when you need it’ protection experiences, designed to integrate and complement partner brands. This enables our partners to serve protection to their customers, in the right channel, with the right product.
Our partners are all different, from Financial Services to lifestyle brands – and protection is relevant to pretty much all of them. There are attractive benefits to having more financially resilient customers – from increased customer lifetime value, brand loyalty, and (of course) additional revenue streams.
"All the while, we’re protecting more people and growing the market."
Gen Z tends not to have conversations as we did, illustrated by Uswitch which recently found a quarter of people aged 18-34 never answer the phone. Meanwhile, as digital natives, they’re comfortable doing their own online research - tending to favour TikTok as a search engine over Google. And, as most young people rent, few have had the traditional opportunity to speak to an adviser when taking out a mortgage - although this remains the most common trigger for protection conversations.
"By working in partnership, we can find new ways to engage with younger people."
We believe partnerships are likely to create more buzz and genuine consumer engagement than TV ads. In today's world, it’s increasingly rare for consumers to sit in front of the TV watching a whole ad break but they may scroll through social posts each day; TikTok is a platform that has huge potential. Our protection services may never be seen ‘above the line’ – it’s not our ambition. We’re more akin to ‘Intel Inside’; empowering and serving consumers while they’re in another brand experience.
The partnership model is not new. Over the last year, we’ve been delighted to work with several wealth, mortgage and General Insurance (GI) firms in a more traditional signposting and specialist advice fulfilment model. At the same time, we’re working with digital-first brands – such as 1st Central and Gretel, and we have a healthy pipeline of partners - inside and outside our sector.
There are certainly more people to protect properly and under-served consumer groups like the younger generation - reaching and engaging them through partnerships is the way forward for us.
