Riding the Whirlwind

Strategic Interactive Marketing for the Insurance Industry

Key Points:

It is difficult to define precise plans when the technology and market place are developing so quickly and in unpredictable ways.

6.2  Develop a Vision

6.2.1 Companies are developing Strategic Interactive Marketing within a complex and turbulent environment:

• individual companies, the industry, and society as a whole is very much on the initial slopes of the learning curve. There are as yet no proven sustainable business models.
• technology is developing extremely fast. What will be developed and (more importantly) how consumers will accept and use the technology is unclear.

6.2.2 For these reasons implementation must be via an incremental approach. Further, implementation is likely to be a collaborative activity with many skills bought-in. There is a risk of fragmentation, with each contributor setting of in a different direction. Whilst project management is an important implementation tool, there is a need for a vision that binds people together in a non-coercive way.

A Vision provides a picture of the future. It helps to avoid fragmentation and wasteful developments.

A Vision binds together the diverse contributors from both inside and outside the company.

- A Share Picture of the Future -

6.2.3 A Vision paints a picture of the future. It's a statement of how things could be, and how we would like them to be. A useful technique is to first create scenarios. From the various scenarios to then extract an overall vision and common goal that will provide the flexibility to succeed whichever scenario transpires. The aim is to identify the key common capabilities for survival, as well as success, and to provide a framework for day-to-day decisions. The managers, who will be responsive for taking the company forwards, are the ideal people to create these scenarios, vision and goals.

Strategy is about to-day - what trade-offs can I make to-day for the future? Paul birch, recently Corporate jester, BA

A useful means of creating a vision are scenarios. Rather than define a precise future they help to identify where an organisation needs to be flexible and which of its capabilities needs to be strong.

6.2.4 Party manifestos provide examples of visions and policy statements but they rarely contain detail. Their purpose is to get people to buy into a particular future. A company vision also needs to gain everyone's commitment and enthusiasm to realise the vision.

Possible Elements of a Vision