AHIP Coverage (November/December 2006)
Conversation
The Duck Heard ’Round the World
Linda Kaplan Thaler, CEO and chief creative officer, The Kaplan Thaler Group Ltd., talks about how branding efforts made Aflac a household name.
By Ed Rabinowitz
Aflac, or American Family Life Assurance Company, is a multibillion-dollar leading provider of supplemental workplace insurance with a 51-year-old history. But in 1999, the company was suffering from consumer awareness (brand recognition) of just 12 percent. When Dan Amos, Aflac chairman and CEO, was asked what kept him up at night, he explained that despite being a successful Fortune 200 company, nobody remembered the company’s name.
Linda Kaplan Thaler, CEO and chief creative officer, and Robin Koval, chief marketing officer and general manager, of the New York city-based Kaplan Thaler Group Ltd., set out to change that. “We said that we’re going to make Aflac a household word,” Thaler recalls. “But it took a lot of courage and a lot of guts for Dan Amos to leave some very warm and tender advertising, and to go to his board and say we’re going to have a duck be our insurance salesman.”
In December 1999, the Aflac duck made its debut. And unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past seven years, you know that Aflac has, indeed, penetrated the country’s collective consciousness.
Over the next four years, sales increased by 20 percent. But even more significant: Consumer awareness jumped from 12 percent to 90 percent. And the Aflac duck has a higher Q score—the measurement marketers use to rate a character’s familiarity and appeal—than Ronald McDonald or the Energizer Bunny.
Coverage spoke with Thaler about why branding matters and what other health plans can learn from the success of the Aflac ad campaign.
Coverage: Why is branding so important?
Thaler: We live in such a cluttered environment. The average consumer is bombarded with about 5,000 messages a day, and like cooked spaghetti, very little of it actually sticks to the wall. There was a famous line that said, “50 percent of advertising is a waste of money. If we only knew which 50 percent it was.” You don’t really know what’s going to work. But if you create something that is so omnipresent, if it gets into the cultural jargon and into the cultural landscape, then it kind of has a holographic effect.
I think of it like a mirror breaking into a thousand pieces. If you have a strong branding idea, you can pick up any chard of glass, look in, and see your reflection in every single chard. When you have something like that and your brand can be symbolized with a picture, a sound, or a jingle, then anyplace you put that duck, even if you’re just walking in Central Park and you see ducks on the pond, you think of Aflac Insurance. That kind of branding reverberates. It creates a ripple effect. And this is a way to have the audience, the viewers, the consumers do the advertising for you. That is the best reason for branding, because it gets adopted by the people who are watching.
Coverage: Is there a set formula for branding or rebranding?
Thaler: I like to think there’s no set formula, but there are certain criteria that make good branding work. It’s usually pretty disruptive. Very often these campaigns are polarizing. You can hate the duck or love the duck, but you remember the duck. And even if it’s not always polarizing, at the end of the day, you do become a discussion point if you have really breakthrough advertising.
Great branding very much tends to be illogical, believe it or not. When you go down the straight and narrow, linear path, you usually end up with straight and narrow, linear thinking, and your brand takes on a more boring persona. Look at something like Perrier. The whole idea of branding water and getting people to buy water is so illogical, until you realize that with great branding it’s never about the thing, it’s always the underlying emotional reasoning for it. Which is why when I hold a bottle of Perrier in my hand, it says that I’m healthy and I care about the way I look. It’s like the difference between having a diamond that you bought at Zales and a diamond that is wrapped in a Tiffany box. It can be the same quality diamond but it means so much more if it comes out of that box.
Coverage: What made you choose a duck?
Thaler: The whole idea of this duck, who I call the under duck, is that he kind of represents all of us. I think it’s another reason why people like this duck. We scream and rant against society, against institutions, and no one hears us. So here’s this duck screaming the name Aflac and nobody hears him. So the notion of the people in the commercial not knowing the name of the company either was the perfect fit. And we thought, this could go on forever because there’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t know the name of the company.
Coverage: Does branding have to be expensive?
Thaler: It depends on the client. You don’t always have a tremendous amount of money. For Herbal Essences we had about $10 million for the media buy, and let me tell you, in the hair care category, that just won’t make a dent. So we had to do something outrageous. When we did the Herbal Essences campaign with the woman having the orgasm in the shower, that was very disruptive. But it really got noticed because up until that time people were talking about end benefit. They weren’t talking about the experience. And we sort of copied that idea from “When Harry Met Sally,” which had come out a few years earlier. I think that the less money you have, the more you have to take risks. Because the bigger risk, of course, is not to be seen or heard. And also the bigger risk is to spend a boatload of money—on the Super Bowl, for instance—and do a commercial that everybody thinks is hysterical, but nobody can remember what the product was. That is not a good use of money.
Coverage: As you’re going through the creative process, how do you know if you’ve strayed too far from the message?
Thaler: Well, that’s the reason we do a lot of ASI testing. You constantly test your product. You test before it goes on the air. You test when it’s on the air. You do focus groups. You do grammar research. You read e-mails. You must be constantly on the pulse of what is going on in the public, because people are fickle. We did a commercial in the Grand Canyon with the duck, and every time he would say Aflac, there would be an echo. Do you know how much negative e-mail we got from zoologists and biologists? They said, “How dare you misrepresent the duck. The duck is the only species that is unable to have an echo.” So I thought, maybe one person knows this? No, we received dozens of e-mails from people who knew that. Now, why would they be offended? I don’t know, but everything is bound to irk somebody. I learned something that day. So you never know.
Coverage: Were you surprised at the campaign’s success?
Thaler: We were, of course, thrilled. That’s always your hope. It has been an exciting ride. It has been a great partnership with the client. The challenge, though, is like in Alice in Wonderland. There’s a great quote—she’s on a chess board and she’s running, and she’s not going anywhere. Somebody goes up to her and says, you’re not getting anywhere. And she says, “Don’t you realize how fast you need to run just to stay in place?” That analogy is very much true in branding and advertising because in order to stay in the place where you were, you have to keep moving. Because the world keeps spinning.
Coverage: What do health plans need to keep in mind as they consider the best ways to market themselves? Can adding humor to the message effectively reposition health plans in the public eye?
Thaler: Yes, as long as it’s kind-hearted humor. We do a lot of pharmaceutical advertising as well, and I think that in general, it’s more important than ever to show empathy and kindness and consideration. Meanness is the last millennium. You see companies rebranding themselves to have a much nicer image. People do not need to accept meanness. You don’t need to stay at a job anymore like that, because you can go to Monster.com and there’s eight zillion jobs out there.
So the universe is wide open. And if a company does something negative, then it gets posted on 15 Web sites, and it’s never leaving. What Johnson & Johnson has done so well is they always try to do the right thing. They’re the company that’s caring for babies. You need to do it 24/7. And if a brand is not consistent that way, it’s too easy for somebody out there to post it on the Web and it never goes away. You can never take back anything on the Internet.
Coverage: Are there key do’s and don’ts when it comes to branding?
Thaler: One, be sure of the impression that you want to make. Two, be consistent. That way, every time a person interacts with your brand, they are completely clear on who you are and what you’re offering. And I think the third thing would be a sense of empathy. Today’s consumers are stressed, harried, busy, never having enough money or sleep. And if you’re going to use humor, you need to have a sense of empathy and show real understanding of your consumer. And lastly, make sure you entertain them. Because they no longer have to watch your ad or look at your billboard or listen to your radio commercial if they don’t want to. They have so many other options. They have to want to stay with you. So I don’t care if it’s the morning news or a late-night vegematic commercial, you’d better entertain me.
Ed Rabinowitz is a freelance health care writer based in Bangor, Pennsylvania.
