One of the biggest challenges a comms team can face is when a company decides to rename itself, and all that entails.
In 2021 RSA Insurance was bought by the Intact Financial Corporation, and subsequently stopped its consumer offering in order to focus on providing products and services to businesses via insurance brokers.
Then last year the company announced its intention to rebrand, as Intact Insurance. In the process there has been a major change in how the firm approaches comms, with its traditional press office evolving to become a modern content hub.
In.Comms spoke to the company’s director of external affairs, Jon Sellors, to find out more about how they went about it, and what they discovered along the way.
“We took the opportunity to review our future marketing and communications structure to ensure that it was fit for the future business,” says Sellors.
This resulted in the creation of a single function for marketing and corporate affairs, which brought together marketing, brand, digital, social and internal and external communications into one business area, he explains.
Then in September 2024 the teams were briefed on the new approach, and the new single function structure came into effect the following month.
Multi-channel approach
By bringing all of these operations together under one roof, the company aimed to make everything run more smoothly. “This move reflected the synergies and alignment within these teams and was designed to ensure more effective collaboration and better outcomes,” Sellors says.
“As well as making the structural changes we also made a cultural shift – moving to more of a newsroom ethos, where every team member produces content with a multi-channel ‘create once, use many’ approach.”
Sellors acts as the editor in chief for the firm’s entire marketing and comms function, aiming to ensure the right stories are told, in the right way, at the right time.
To help make this a reality, they use a content grid, complemented by strategies designed to define what is created and why, making sure everything is properly aligned to business goals. The ‘create once, use many’ approach ensures the best use is made of each piece of content by repurposing it for as many different applications as possible.
Another big change in working practices has been the adoption of AI, with the comms team now using Microsoft Copilot to help with everything from idea generation and headlines to research, as well as tone and consistency.
The importance of buy-in
Working with senior leaders at all stages was key to getting company-wide support for the new approach, according to Sellors. This included “setting out the rationale for the changes and including them in reviewing and agreeing proposed structures and ways of working”.
“In addition, as part of the strategic repositioning of the business, other functions were also looking at their structures,” he adds, “and how to set themselves up for success as a focused commercial and specialty lines insurer so we were not alone in making changes.”
The most surprising aspect of the changes though, Sellors reveals, was the creation of the in-house videographer role. “I initially did not think we would generate enough demand to fill one person’s time,” he said. “The opposite has happened and as more people see the quality of video being produced the demand gets greater.”
Since the move more than 50 videos have been produced in less than a year, resulting in a saving of at least £150k compared to outsourcing the work, according to Sellors.
So looking back, what does he feel has been the most difficult change they made?
“While making the structural changes was challenging at the time, in many ways that is the easy bit,” he says. “The cultural change of breaking down traditional siloed ways of working and getting everyone to routinely think in an integrated, multi-channel, ‘create once, use many’ way has been more challenging.”
Last year was about “putting the planning tools in place and getting the new ways of working embedded,” Sellors said. “The process isn’t complete and it’s still a work in progress.”