Zurich, November 28, 2005 – Zurich Financial Services (Zurich) is launching an international corporate brand campaign today. After engineering a significant business turnaround, Zurich is now positioning its brand within the global marketplace. The Group is commencing this international brand campaign as the next important step in pursuit of its goal of becoming a leading insurance brand in its chosen markets.
James J. Schiro, Chief Executive Officer of Zurich, said: "The time is right for Zurich to focus on a worldwide coherent brand. To create new growth opportunities, we need to raise Zurich’s profile with our business and consumer customers. Together with The Zurich Way, the brand initiative will continue the transformation of our Group that began more than three years ago and ensure that all customers have a uniform brand experience, dealing with one Group speaking with one voice. Building Zurich into a leading global brand will enhance our market presence and ability to attract and retain new customers."
The campaign started with print advertisements in the leading national press of Zurich’s home market Switzerland, as well as in Austria and Germany on November 25, 2005 and will be in leading US and European media from today on. The print advertisements will be followed by TV commercials, which will be aired for the first time on December 6, 2005. In the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain the campaign will start in early 2006.
Summarized in the tagline Because change happenz, the campaign addresses the need of Zurich’s customers to manage and cope with the variety of changes that life brings on them or their business. To help its customers, Zurich actively evaluates change to deliver innovative and secure insurance solutions in an unpredictable and rapidly changing world.
E. Randall Clouser, Group Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Global Communications at Zurich, said: "Building the Zurich brand is a dynamic process, not an event. We are executing a marketing mix that includes advertising, sponsorships, events and a corporate customer relationship management initiative designed to create awareness and familiarity amongst our target audience. To ensure that our 57,000 employees worldwide understand our brand position, ten months ago we launched an internal brand program. This internal program prepares our employees to identify opportunities to deliver our brand promise to customers in a distinctively Zurich Way. Clearly, the brand building process at Zurich is more than advertising and aesthetics."
The brand campaign has been developed together with Publicis, the world's fourth largest communications group headquartered in Paris.
Note to the editors:
The first series of print advertisements can be viewed on Zurich’s website www.zurich.com, while TV commercials will be available starting
December 6.
