End of Day Summary Day 6: Still no word from IF Vakuutus

Well as i posted earlier today the main news has been that IF vakuutus seem to have stopped communicating and engaging me. They still have not answered my requests and it is still sitting on their facebook wall.

If Vakuutus's Wall Comment

Read the full thread

Today i wrote about this as IF vakuutus's lost opportunity. This was based upon what i wrote as IF vakuutus's opportunity in the first post on the subject when the blog began.These are fast becoming the most popular posts on the blog.

I have not toally given up on If yet and hope that they choose to engage me tomorrow.

Development of Strategy

Well some of you may have noticed i have learned and have improved the look of the blog by adding more user friendly buttons from addthis.com the advantage of which are they are nicer for you and will give me some better statistics about their use and traffic generated from them. I can recommend this to others as they are really easy to use and setup.

If you are visiting this blog from Sweden, Norway, Denmark or Latvia then you probably arrived here from If's Facebook group pages in those countries so welcome to you.

I am not going to try and damage these If country's reputations or either try to interfere with their marketing as i am not their customer and i am not attempting to engage them directly. Comments from them are of course welcome also.

I have posted on these pages as i think that people visiting those pages may have an interest in seeing what is going on on If Finlands pages. Below  is what i posted onto If Swedens Facebook wall.

View If Sweden's Facebook wall

Actually i just noticed they removed my If Sweden vs If Vakuutus Finland post. That is ok i do not mind. I wont put it back. Interesting they left the other post though.

I have also expanded my own use of social media channels to include my own YouTube channel Unfortunately i have not uploaded any rant videos directed at If Vakuutus Finland like the one i have previously posted here on the blog. but i am linking to If Finlands own YouTube advertisements where i now also have a presence. People can link to the blog via that media also.

I describe this type of content as a "Piggyback" Strategy as described in my earlier post today.

You are probably thinking about what i will do if If continue not to engage me. I will keep that under my hat for now but i think it is doing them more damage than good as described in the previous post today.

In terms of attracting interest it has been another record day on the blog today and again we have increased the twitter followers substantially and again have been replublished several times. Thanks to everyone contributing. You know who you are (i try to twit everyone to thank them, sorry if i missed anyone).

BTW i read a great blog today about how not to engage your upset customers via social media. So i will end with this. Seems that If broke most of these rules. Stay tuned! I have added this link to the relevant links section at the bottom of the post.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/10-ways-to-deal-with-upset-customers-using-social-media/

Piggybacking as a Social Media Strategy

In this experiment i have discovered that the best way to get reliable traffic volumes to my blog has been through two main channels.

1. Gaining regular twitter followers who regularly visit the blog as well as promoting it.
2. Piggybacking on If' vakuutus's own social media.

By placing my story directly onto If vakuutus's facebook wall i have managed to get a lot of traffic of theirs to visit my blog. This is great in this situation because i have been able to really get attention of people who actually care about If insurance, what they do and their practices.
These are actually the most valuable visitors to the blog (sorry to my faithful twitter followers). The reason for this is that If actually care about those people they are their customers, employees and shareholders primarily. They are not so worried about a social media nerd (such as myself) sat at a computer, in his mother's basement in the back end of nowhere, Dakota USA.  Sorry anyone fitting that description ;-)

As such as this has been such a succesful channel for me to gain attention and to steal and gain support of real If vakuutus's own followers. I have now expanded the use of this to other social media channels utilised by If.

If vakuutus's Youtube channel

I am now present on If vakuutus's youtube channel and all Finnish If videos. People who look at those comments can access my blog.

I have also set up my own Youtube channel as a distribution channel from If vakuutus's own video content to my blog.

There are a couple of problems with doing this on YouTube. Unlike on the If's facebook group it is difficult for me to add my own valuable content. Some of the videos do not allow your comments to incude links so people must first click your profile to get to your channel and then to the blog.

The second problem is that for the most part If vakuutus embed the videos from YouTube into their own pages. In this way the comments are not visible unless the site visitor clicks through to YouTube.

As such this is not a particularly good channel for generating traffic to my own social media but it is still a valid channel for interfering with If's marketing message and an annoyance to If vakuutus themselves.

Other If Vakuutus Facebook Groups

As i mentioned in my "Fun Post" If Finland Vs If Sweden the Finns are fiercely competitive with the Swedes. As such i have added to the Swedish If group the following.

Click to Visit If Swedens Facebook Group

Previously there has not been much traffic from Sweden so it will be interesting to see what happens now.

I am now also on If Insurance Denmark's, If Norway's and If Insurance Latvia's Facebook group pages.

I will update you if this pattern changes in a later post.

A Bit of Fun: IF Vakuutus Finland vs IF Insurance Sweden

One thing about the Finns is their love hate relationship with Sweden. For a long period of it's history Finland was ruled by Sweden and of course this explains alot.

Like England and Germany's relationship this is usually most apparent on the sports field and being Scandanavia most importantly on the ice hockey rink. To summarise that relationship so far.

World Champiosnships                                                   Olympics (Gold, Silver Bronze, Total)

Finland 2,6,3,    Total Medals 11                                       0,2,3,     Total Medals 5
Sweden 8,17,15 Total Medals 40                                       2,2,4      Total Medals 8

The Finns wont like that at all but it is the truth. However nicely for the Finns in the world championship victories they did beat the Swedes which adds extra satisfaction!

Coincidently

Britain World Championships Ice Hockey 1,1,1, Total 3 Medals!! Amazing don't have a clue how that is possible.

In terms of love for the Swedes

This is most apparent in the amount of interest here in the Swedish royal family. Especially since the baby arrived.

Ok so the Match UP is IF Vakuutus Finland Online Marketing Vs IF Insurance Sweden Online Marketing

Finland and Sweden are countries of roughly the same size population (a couple of million difference) so the numbers can be interpretted in that way.

YouTube Performance

If Insurance have both a Swedish and Finnish advert. Both are identical except the language. See my Youtube channel for all the content described here.

The current one contains a girl getting out of the pool. Both of these adverts have approximately the same numebr of views and in fact Finland is slightly winning that competition. As such we need a tiebreaker.

Lets take a look at a slightly older advert. Their "Toy Shop advert" also on YouTube of course.

Swedish Advert views 3 756
Finnish Advert views just over 1 169

In this case there is a marked difference. Why?
The swedes applied a trick which worked amazingly well. They uploaded a video of the advert but also with info about how they made it. In the video the toy shop is destroyed and they explain how they did it.

Swedish: how the advert was made advert 73 576 views.

This is amazing they managed to get people to watch the whole advert first (nice one) and then they got to see how it was made. This undoubtedly is a big reason why the Swedes out performed the Finns. Why didn't Finland copy this? They usually do.

If Insurance Sweden win Youtube contest hands down

Twitter

Swedish Twitter 239 Tweets 135 Followers
Finnish Twitter 0 Tweets 27 followers including me (it was about 12 when i started)

Enough said If Vakuutus Finland have not adapted to twitter at all.

IF Insurance Sweden win Twitter competition hands down.

Facebook

In this one group membership is roughly equal.

Finland 5051 members 224 Talking about
Sweden 6504 members 169 Taling about

Finland win talking about, Sweden win membership (Did i affect this?)

Facebook Result Score Draw

LinkedIn

Well only IF Sweden have a profile that i could find so it can only go one way.

IF Insruance Sweden win the LinkedIn Competition.

Final Score

I Insurance Sweden Social Marketing 3 If Vakuutus Finland Social Marketing  0

Epilogue

When groupon came to Finland suddenly there were about 5 copies of the same business idea. That is once the Finns saw it worked.

The large volume of copies of foreign television shows and the lack of original Finnish made shows in Finland is testament to that also. Finns like to copy stuff that works generally and in terms of marketing especially original campaigns and marketing concepts are few and far between.

In my opinion Swedes are much more extravert and this generally leads to a more independent creative environment. Finns are a fairly homogenous population that strives to keep everyone the same. They are more introvert. Finns are not encouraged to be different and are actively encouraged to conform to the norm or to follow the rules i.e. expected norms of behaviour. In this way for professional fields that require creativity, independent thought and looking at and doing things in a different way that may be against the normal way of working, Finns are not culturally suited. This ultimately means they do not excel in fields that require alternative thinking or ways of working outside of the traditional or established means, roles and structures.

IF Vakuutus Seem to have lost their opportunity.

As i mentioned previously If vakuutus had a great opportunity when this case was first started. They could have turned this into a true success story of customer engagement.
However they have chosen not to take that route. Their line is simple this is how it seems to me.

Yes we admitteldy made a mistake but those additional costs you incurred because of our mistake are your problem not ours.

They are sticking to the line that our terms and conditions tell us not to pay when airlines go bankrupt. This is not in question and never was, even though i do not agree with that policy.

There current strategy seems to be: We are not going to talk to you now and hope you go away.

What does this strategy mean for If Vakuutus?

1. IF are not participating in the engagement process this means that they lose all control of the conversation they are unable to defend themselves.
2. IF further dilute their own messaging as i will continue to dirsrupt their own social media marketing channels. They have lost control of their own media.
3. They will continue to incur costs for having to deal with this claim which are actually way above the original costs of the claim.
4. They risk alienating their own customer base themselves through their own actions or inaction in this case.
5. There is day on day damage to their brand image and reputation. The interest in this story is growing day on day.

This is a very nice strategy well done ;-)

What does this strategy say about If Vakuutus?

1. They do not care that their customers have to pay for their mistakes. That is a nice message to send out. They are also promoting this message themselves on their own social media by not responding to the claim.
2. They do not think that they have to engage with their customers on social media even on their own Facebook group in particular. That is great Social CRM.
3. They do not see what i am doing as a risk to them. They do not understand the power of social media. I thought Insurance companies were all about risk.
4. They risk being perceived as childish and stubborn. If Vakuutus refuse to even outline their case what else can it say? I am happy to engage them in discussion why are they afraid to do this publically?
5. Do they know what to do? Does their crisis communication strategy include social media channels.

I actually welcome this strategy because it reinforces what i thought about them. They do not care they do not help despite what their slogan says.