Kathryn (00:03):
Hi everyone. We are on season five, episode nine. And today I have way back with me and Kevin Carr of Carr Consulting. Hi both.

Roy (00:12):
Hi there.

Kevin (00:13):
Hello.

Kathryn (00:14):
Today, we’re going to be talking through public relations and insurance. This is the practical protection podcast. How you both doing? Have you had lovely weekends?

Kevin (00:28):
It’s been okay. It was my dad’s 80th, but he had COVID so we didn’t see him, um, bless him, but hopefully we’ll see him on Saturday instead.

Kathryn (00:37):
Well, that’ll be lovely. That’ll be so nice.

Roy (00:40):
Happy birthday, Kevin’s dad, who we got to know and love over the years,

Kevin (00:44):
Alan Carr will believe it or not.

Kathryn (00:46):
Yes, Alan Carr. That’ll probably confuse some listeners, but yeah, it’s not the Alan Carr, but it is the, the other Alan Carr kind of

Roy (00:55):
Correct. Yeah. Kevin’s dad is funny.

Kathryn (00:58):
Okay. Um, well I hope he’s obviously COVID, you know, it’s, it’s still that thing, isn’t it, obviously we’re seeing numbers on their eyes and it’s um, and everyone just seems to, I kind of feel like it’s a bit of a free form now as to what people are doing and everything, but, so I hope he’s doing all right. And it’s not, um, not upsetting him too much in a sense.

Kevin (01:15):
He seems fine. He seems fine. Thank you. He’s supposed to be on holiday, but he is not gone obviously.

Kathryn (01:20):
Was he going abroad

Kevin (01:22):
Know he doesn’t go abroad. He hasn’t been abroad since he was about 20, I think.

Kathryn (01:25):
Oh, right. Okay.

Kevin (01:27):
He likes, he likes a UK holiday camp.

Kathryn (01:29):
Huh? Fair enough. There must some nice ones about that’s very good. So today, everybody, we are going to be chatting, um, through obviously PR and obviously definitely an area that Kevin is specialist in. I’m sure that probably the majority of our we’ll know who you are and, um, know about protection of you that obviously you’re heavily involved in. And then I think today’s probably hearing a lot more about like the, the other kind of things that you are doing in terms of how we promote, you know, potentially companies, how promote ourselves at awards and also what we’re doing in terms of as an industry. Um, because I think all of us are very aware. The, it, um, we all feel that there’s a lot of negativity about insurance and it’d be quite good to maybe have you come in and uh, sorry, get rid of some of the myths around that. Possibly it’d be really good to have your insights. So it’s probably a really good idea to just start off with you giving us a bit of background about how you got into PR and also the world of protection.

Kevin (02:22):
Well, the world of protect, I, uh, I started working for nationwide when I was 18, um, at the, um, at Victoria Branch. Although my interview was at, was at Moorgate where I ended up. Um, and I was on the till doing the things that you do was 18 year old working on the till in a building society. Uh, and I quickly realised that the only interesting was the financial adviser, um, because he was fun and he seemed to come and go when he liked. And he had meetings with people when he wasn’t, he just sat on a desk, handing out money behind this sort of pain of glass. So I thought, well, branch device is a bit of a long stretch given the exams and Ian experience, but this mortgage adviser thing seemed a bit of a halfway house. So what I did was I, uh, I learned all the systems, so I learned how to work the, the, the mortgage quote system.

Kevin (03:15):
And I, I learned the products that nationwide had and I weigh and people would come into the banking hall and say, can I talk to someone about a mortgage? And quite often they’d have to book an appointment for a week or two later because there was either nobody there or the person was already doing an interview. And uh, someone came in one afternoon and I said, I’ll do it as a, literally a spotty 18 year old. Um, and my manager looked at me as if, to say, you know, are you kidding me? And I said, what have you got to lose? They’re about to walk out and go to Halifax. I know the products, I know the systems, give me a go. Um, so she did, um, thankfully, and that we ended up winning that case and I got sent on a, a, a proper training course and moved to gate and became one of the best, uh, more advisers in, in nationwide. Um, now we weren’t allowed to do protection. Interestingly, we were, we were doing the GI side of it. So you do buildings and contents, but life insurance sat with the financial adviser. Um, now eventually I left nationwide and via a couple of years at commercial, I joined a phone called life search. Um, I was employ number 10. I can remember that. Cause I said it on the pay slip, a couple had already left. So there was only, it’s only seven or eight of us then. Uh, and can can’t

Kathryn (04:33):
Imagine life search being that small? I have to say it just, I know it must have started somewhere, but I just can’t imagine it.

Kevin (04:39):
Yes, it did. It started with a chap called Brian Wilson, who was adviser number one, an advert in the yellow pages and with a phone number. And I think Brian sat in, in the baker Davis office, Tom’s other IFA business that he eventually sold and when the phone rang, Brian answered it and it went from there. So it, I joined life search in 2000. Um, so it’s that 22 years ago I joined life search as a protection adviser.

Roy (05:05):
Wow. That’s, that’s a, that’s a long time ago, mate. Um, it’s interesting. You mentioned training courses there actually. Um, I mean you, you come across IAS all the time clearly. Do you think we we’ve lost some of those because I used to go on those similar. Do you think we’ve lost some of those brilliant training courses that some of the, the, the direct companies did

Kevin (05:22):
To an extent, I mean, you, you and I have both attended lots of training and we’ve delivered lots of training as well. You know, we we’ve stood up in front of, of, uh, certainly over a thousand advisers over the years and, and the point we’ve all often made and, and Kathryn, you’ll be more aware of this than us these days, but as to what it extent, you know, that the, the training, if you like is really sales focused and really product focused. And certainly during my time as an adviser, I had every insurer coming in past and present multiple times. And it, it got to the point where we really did indirectly start to charge them for adviser’s time because it wasn’t training, it was product push. It was we’ve launched this product. This is what it does, you know, aren’t we brilliant. And it wasn’t necessarily overcoming objections or, uh, how to, how to, uh, you know, how to explain in a simple one line sentence, it wasn’t necessarily about wider market issues or even wider consumer issues.

Kevin (06:24):
It was really product push. And you still see that today, you still go to conferences, um, and you still see companies really just essentially doing product push because a lot of that push comes understandably from marketing, who are spending lots of money for those slots. And they want to get the return on that spend. But I think 6, 7, 8, 9 advisers out of 10 will tell you, they will much rather hear things that they can learn and implement in their business the next day. And that would also more be more likely to encourage more business to that company.

Roy (06:56):
So the sales side of the, of the relationship with the insurers is, is more important than the actual product.

Kevin (07:04):
Uh, look, it’s a combination, isn’t it? You, if you haven’t got good products and good prices, then you’re going to struggle to get business, whatever you do for me, it it’s the combination of all of them, isn’t it? Um, it, it it’s, you need a decent product range. You need good broker support. You need good salesman areas, but you need to understand how advisers think and how advisers work. And a lot of the people that deliver the training from insurers are unusually it’s unusual if they’ve been an adviser in their career. And I had a lot of advisers say to me over the years, how patronizing they found it when someone who’s never done their job of sat in their shoes, never understood what it’s really like to sit down, be it face to face or on the phone, or run a video with a customer, uh, and, and, and, and, and, and give advice.

Kevin (07:49):
And, and the difficulty, especially in the modern age, where when people’s time span is so short and their attention is so short and that the skill involved to get something like action across and to get the importance across and to get the importance of disclosure and underwriting across so that people buy something that is suitable and stick with it, you know, for, for, for longer decades to be told how to do that. But someone who’s never done it is a challenging place for the industry to be, I think, and I think it, it’s an area where we, we could do far as an industry, if we all sort of listen to each other.

Roy (08:23):
Absolutely. We could talk about, yeah, we could talk about that subject phrases. I would just, I’m very conscious. We’re here to talk about your PR skills as well, but, uh, I’m sure we’ll come back to that. So tell us when, when did you first sort of jump out of the advisery, uh, bandwagon onto the, uh, onto the PR one then?

Kevin (08:38):
Well, most people, I had no idea what ER was or how newspapers worked. You just sort of read them and forgot about it, didn’t you? Um, what really happened, I think, was, was Tom bakery understood, always understood the benefits of, of PR and brand and, and, you know, making a noise, especially, you know, if you’re making a noise about, about doing something that is right and good for people. So we had a PR agency, um, at that time, and what would happen is every now and again, a journalist would phone up and they’d ring the free phone number, you know, the oh 800 number for life search. And whichever adviser answered it would end up dealing with that journal list. And you would give them some comments, you’d answer questions about how products worked, and you’d normally give them some price, examples, like a little rate table and a week or two later, that would run in the times of the Telegraph or the mal or whatever it might be.

Kevin (09:29):
Um, what happened was that the other advisers didn’t like doing it. They thought it was a waste of their time. Wasn’t a customer. They weren’t going to earn any money out of it. And they could be earning money out, speaking to real customers. Whereas I thought, I thought this is great. This is really exciting. Um, I’m speaking to a journalist at the times. There was, I, you know, I, I, I just got a buzz out of it. And what was really exciting is it began to Dawn on me, but it was doubt helping my advice and my sales as well, because back in those days, you would work something like one in three Saturdays. So you’d come in on a Saturday morning, life search would be open and low and behold, there’s my name in a national newspaper. And because live search was quite small back then, the leads that, that would’ve driven, you know, the phone calls, those pieces would’ve driven, would’ve been in, you know, 5, 10, 20, 30, and a few emails, uh, included in that as well. These days, life actually talking to thousands of people a day. So that the, the PR that, that that’s driven is, is a smaller percentage, but I’d be on the phone to somebody who’d rang a life search because they’d seen that piece in the paper that morning, and they’d realised they were talking to the person in the paper. And that was just pretty much, you know, as, as long as I didn’t say anything silly or untoward, that was 95% guaranteed to be a customer. So I, so they were

Roy (10:46):
Like, is, is this actually Kevin KA and the mail on Sunday? Or is this Kevin card I’ve just read about in the, in the, uh, you know, the daily express or whatever it was. So

Kevin (10:55):
Literally, yes, it sounds silly. Uh, and it sounds, you know, it sounds, I’m almost slightly embarrassed to say it, but yes, that’s what would happen. Um, so I found that it was helping me, it was helping the business, uh, and then other advisers just said, oh, it’s one of your journalist friends, Kevin on the phone. And they put them through to me. So it became part of my job that took up 5%, 10%, 20% of, of, of your time. And I’ll always remember the first journalist ever spoke to a lovely chap called mark a from the time. So I’m still very much in, in touch with now. And, um, Tom took me to lunch one day. Um, this would’ve been about two or three years into my career at life search, probably about 18 months, two years in. And he sort of said, what do you want to do, Kevin, I’m going to give, be three options.

Kevin (11:39):
Um, life such is going to expand. We’re going to open a new office, you know, be in Brighton and I want you to go and build it and basically replicate everything we’ve done in, in, in London. And I thought, oh, I like Brighton. That’s my favorite place in the country? Probably the second option was to be a proper financial adviser at Baywood AVEs and go and do the exams and learn about pensions and investments and all of that. And I’d sat G 10, the, the trustee one, I think. And I’d, uh, I think I passed that. I remember failing G 20 miserably, which was the advanced investment one, had no idea what I was doing over with that one on, um, and option three was to quit being an adviser and be a full-time PR and become the actual spokesperson for life search. And what happened was that Brighton soon became Milton Keynes. Um, and if I needed a, a, a, a final thing to make my mind up, that was it. And I chose the PR route. So PR are, it was, and I stopped being an adviser. And, and my job became all about talking to journalists and talking to the industry and anything that involved getting the message about protection out there, because it was always protection first life search second. And I still stand by that now, um, because that is better for the customer, better for the industry and better for the brand as well.

Kathryn (12:56):
I was going to say, it’s, um, speaking to people, like you said, it, it, it really does help. And obviously it’s something where, you know, I do that quite often where the journalists will contact and again, you know, so your name will be in it. And, you know, and we have people who come to us and obviously we are very specialist, you know, so obviously people tend to come to us if they’ve got, so they think, oh, I’ve read this. And it’s, it’s very similar to my situation. And, and, um, and it can really be like that. So I think sometimes people might see it as, as you said, you know, a bit of a drain on their time, but there actually can be some return from that. And I think there’s a bit of a, there’s a couple of bits of return. So there’s a return and sense you might get, you know, you might get some clients, but obviously as well, if you are putting stuff out out there, it’s potentially that your name’s then going to be known by others in the industry who they might see you as somebody who’s worthwhile to know.

Kathryn (13:41):
And they might just, you know, it might start to build a bit of an informal network there. And then there’s also a bit of feel, good factor. I know for me, like whenever I’m putting anything out there and it’s helping people to understand what they might see, all the terms that they might get for go for insurer. It just, it, it makes me feel good to think, right. I’m actually helping this person prepare for what might be the end result. Um, but I think as well, people can be quite cautious at times in terms of speaking to journalists, because ultimately you stop, like some people think, well, is what I’m going to say, going to end up being potentially twisted a little bit, or is it going to be, um, you know, put in an article with other people that I may not want to be linked with, or is it going to be put out context?

Kathryn (14:22):
But I wonder if that stems a little bit from the fact that, you know, we all have this image in our minds, that insurers are putting quite a, a negative light in terms of, um, sorry, tabid papers. And that often seems to be some kind of horror story of some start wear in his show has been absolutely horrendous. And, um, you know, we’ve certainly seen a number of news articles where in shows haven’t come across as seeming, as living up to what they promised. And, and that obviously is, is always very difficult, but why don’t you think that we hear, we, obviously we remember the negative stories, are there just as many positive stories out there, we just forget them, or is it that we are struggling to get those positive stories out there?

Kevin (15:06):
Wow. Um, it, it’s interesting for me that you mentioned people being cautious. That’s obviously true and understandable, and generally speaking, most people should have a degree of, of media training before you expose yourself to that world, especially at the age of social media, um, because the, the, these things are not limited to a, a Saturday morning read as, as they once were. Um, my, my initial training, and I remember my first ever, uh, press lunch with another gen, another gentleman from, from the times the Sunday Times called David Budworth. It was at, um, at bank, a wonderful restaurant. And my briefing in the cab over from Tom was literally, don’t say a word, have a nice lunch, listen, and learn if it gets call, if I need some backup about how a product works or what a nor union do, that’s Scottish provide don’t or whatever it might be.

Kevin (15:59):
I’ll, I’ll make it very clear to say something. Otherwise you just sit there and you listen and you’ll learn. And that was my introduction, um, to, to, to how these things work. So being cautious is, is certainly sensible. Um, to go back to your question. I, I think the first thing to bear in mind is, is the, uh, an old phrase from a PR point of view, which is plain land safely is not news. Um, pension pays out life. Insurance policy pays out, endowment pays out is not news. Um, news is either the plural of the word. And as someone famous once said, news is what somebody else doesn’t want printed. It’s what somebody else doesn’t want to, to be read. Um, now that said, when it comes to protection, um, my truth is that it’s a bit of a myth that I think the initially needs to stop perpetuating.

Kevin (16:53):
I think we beat ourselves up and I think it’s counterproductive to keep saying, oh, there’s no good news stories. Oh, it’s always the bad ones. Why do they always pick on us? I, I think it’s a myth that’s never existed. Um, certainly if, if it was true, it’s less true in the last decade than it was beforehand. And the more we keep saying it, the more people believe it. Um, for me, there are lots of good and balanced stories. I see them every week. I work on them, um, every week, certainly most of them probably 60, 70, 80% of all stories written about protection come through us or touch us, or we’re involved with in, in some way. Um, one way or another truth for me is that we don’t then do enough with the good balanced, informative ones company, a doesn’t want to share it, because company B is mentioned, um, in it.

Kevin (17:48):
Um, for example, and we do remember the bad ones and we, we assume that, you know, more people read the bad ones than the nice ones. And a lot of journalists sort of get fed up, being asked, why don’t you write about protection more often? Cause they think, well, I did, I wrote about two weeks ago. You obviously didn’t read it. That’s how journal this might well react in, in private. They know they wrote about it. Um, and to keep being asked about it proves that, that we a don’t read it and B don’t remember them and, and C don’t do enough with it. What I’d really love, uh, is for the industry to try and work together, to do more so that we can a get these stories out there, much better as a collective because between us all, but God, we spend hours and hours and hours on social media.

Kevin (18:32):
Don’t we, um, trying, you know, to promote the good things and, and explain the more challenging, um, areas. But wouldn’t, it also be great if there was some sort of structure for the industry to respond and react when there is a decline claim in the press, the moment it’s all very scatter gun, Roy would do a bit, Kathryn would do a bit, we’ll do a bit plenty. Others will do a bit and then a story and that’s before a story even runs and then a story runs and it goes on social and a whole other bunch of people will get involved. Other advisers and insurers, another journalists will see it and we’ll respond and share, and that will go across Twitter and LinkedIn, and there’ll be a bunch of emails. And then we’ll email the insurer saying, well, what, what really happened then? What, what isn’t in this story that we need to know?

Kevin (19:23):
And the amount of work, if you add a, all of that work, it’s hundreds of hours. Um, not, not each but collectively hundreds of hours. I think it goes on for pretty much every decline claim, um, or EV every, every article where, where I think, you know, it doesn’t necessarily cast the industry in, in a, in a completely positive, uh, light, um, which is not as often as it feels truth, be told. I mean, I, Roy and I, we remember times, uh, I remember a particular way where there were three different decline claims in the national press in the same week, same week to 10 days. One was on TV. Um, two were in national papers and as an adviser, uh, we had customers emailing and ringing up the next day, that week, the next week saying, should I cancel, um, this doesn’t sound very good. Should I cancel this policy? Uh, because of that, it’s nothing like that these days, there, there aren’t three different people in a week on the TV criticizing protection insurance. Um, we, we get on average a year, would we say half a dozen tops? Now I would say, uh, and, and, and I think we need to make far bet far better use of, of, of the better pieces, um, and stop beating ourselves up and end the myth that it’s only doom and gloom.

Roy (20:38):
I think the other thing to say here Kevin is, is that, and I learned this, uh, uh, on numerous patients is that when you engage with a journalist and we’re going to come on to how, how younger, uh, adviser might want to do this, but when you engage with them, um, it’s actually a bit of fresh air most of the time, isn’t it? Firstly, they’re very nice people. Secondly, they want to come and talk to us. They want to learn from us as well as always. The other thing, you know, you said new journalists starting recently at money market and financial adviser ringing the lights of you and I up and, and Kathryn I’m sure. And saying, could you teach us about out this product? So there’s that, that general knowledge and, and I think, you know, the other, uh, the, the other thing that they, they almost plead with you is, is give us some stories, you know, tell us, tell us these good stories that you’ve got, because there aren’t enough of ’em around. It’s not that we’re not going to print them. We will print them, but, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s just a lack of them. Um, is that, is that fair?

Kevin (21:26):
Absolutely. I mean, we’ve had an apprentice start with us, um, 18 year old, um, through the P RCA apprentice scheme, which is brilliant. And you know, her involvement with us is, is, is what, and all, you know, we, we, she’s involved in everything that, that we do on a daily and, and weekly basis, because I kind of figure that’s how I’d want to learn. Um, and one of the conversations we were having reach recently was about how difficult it can be to talk to journalists. You know, you often you might not know them, they’re a stranger. You might have this preconceived idea that they’re going to twist my words, that they, you know, that, that they’re going to do something untoward. Um, and 99 times F a hundred, that is, is absolutely not true. Um, but also the important thing to is what the journalist is thinking journalists, especially on the trade press are often quite young.

Kevin (22:14):
Um, they’re often not experienced in the industry without qualifications. They’re expected to speak to experts. Who’ve been doing this job 20, 30, 40 years and come across as intelligent, as knowledgeable and are sent questions and write sensible pieces of, of, of content. So the pressure on a young journalist just to pick up the phone or send an email to an expert of 30 years can be incredibly daunting. And just as daunting as you might think it is speaking to a journalist for the first time. So it, it it’s, you know, it, it’s the, it’s an interesting dynamic in an interesting relationship between PRS and spokespeople and journalists and both need each other, both respect each other. Uh, and the outcome of course, should always be that consumers get better protected and, and advisers get better educated.

Kathryn (23:02):
Yeah, I was going to say, so Kevin, I was going to say, can I just scoot back to something there very quickly that just, um, I came to me so, you know, we talk about out the positive stories and I think probably a lot of advisers will be in the same boat as us. And I mean, obviously I know we are very specialists, so it would be, you know, it’d be very hard for us to just put a story out and anonymize it as much as possible. And for somebody that we’ve helped due to the very nature of our client base for them to not know all the talking about me. Um, I find it really hard personally to know how to approach that. And like, if someone’s also, I mean, I was going to say we don’t have many claims at all, which probably surprising to a lot of people considering again, uh, the way that our client bases seem high risk.

Kathryn (23:41):
We barely have any claims. And I personally find it really hard to figure out how I would approach somebody about that. You know, if someone’s just had a critical illness claim, how do I go? You know? So I approach them without seeming like I’m trying to promote my brand without seeming like I’m trying to get some kind of commercial benefit from the fact that they’ve maybe just been diagnosed with a really serious cancer or something. It’s it feels for me personally inside it feels wrong to even contemplate asking someone that, so I think, you know, sometimes in terms of the, the positive stories, it’s, it’s possibly something like that as well is that, I, I just, I don’t even know how to approach that.

Kevin (24:18):
It’s a brilliant and very apt question. I, I think I’ve been involved with at least 150 case studies over the last 20 years. Um, obviously we, we, you don’t count, but, but we, we know the figure is higher than that. Um, and certainly it’s got harder as the years have gone on. And I think a lot of that is to do with social media. Um, I used to estimate back in the days that life search that five phone calls that I’d get a case study. Um, and then it became 10. And then I think by the time I left life search, it’s probably 20 phone calls to get a case study. And, and now I think it it’s gradually become even harder. Um, would I want to do it very, probably not. Um, because it does involve your name and your picture, um, anonymized case studies occasionally work, but again, the 99 times out of a hundred, um, for it to be newsworthy, they want to talk to the person and have the photograph and, and have their name.

Kevin (25:14):
Um, you don’t usually have to go into as much detail as your salary and your address and, and your job, but the name and a picture is, is, is essential. Um, I think a key thing to our relationship and timing it, it pre often they need to come from somebody who has that relationship and not just be a PS on the end of a claim letter. Um, I think that’s very unlikely to, to get in anywhere. Timing is of course is, is, is important. Um, you don’t want it going out, you know, 40 hours after, uh, a diagnosis is, is, is made. Um, you’ve got to bear in mind. Well that if a payout is involved and this is particularly relevant for social media, is that that people may not want friends, family, colleagues, knowing that they’ve suddenly come into, uh, what is for most people, the very large amount of money.

Kevin (26:00):
It could be hundreds of thousands, you know, mortgage clearing types of money. But the way that we do it is, is simply to understand that some people want to do this. Some people for the reason might be, you know, um, because they love being a newspaper. And we say, people look the line I’ve viewed hundreds of times, probably thousands is look, some people love doing this. Some people hate it. So what we’re going to do to you is give you the option. Um, if you, if, if you want and you’re picturing a newspaper, you want to buy a couple of copies, get it framed, put it on the stairs. Um, you know, have so to show the kids when they grow up. It’s a funny, lovely thing to do. And if you read the national press and you see people’s pictures in there, this is how it works.

Kevin (26:42):
Um, if you don’t want to do it, if that idea scares you and you’re thinking, Nope, absolutely no, no, not for me. No problem at all. No, it doesn’t make any odds. Um, but we’re giving people the option if they want to do it. If they say yes, they’re interested, we’ll always have about a checklist of 10 things that will go through with them. Um, on the funny survey, ask if they’ve got any pets, because if a pet gets in the picture that can increase the word count. So a story can go from half a page to a page in a national newspaper, slightly different online, of course. Uh, but that can have an impact. And on the more serious side, we will always say, take your time, go and talk to your partner, talk to your family, take a week, take two weeks. You haven’t got to rush this. Nothing happens yet. Go and think about it. And if they don’t come back to me, we leave them alone. Generally, if they want to come back to me, then may it’s because they want to do it and we’ve covered all the bases. And then we go ahead. But even then, it can still take many months before it might appear in a newspaper.

Roy (27:41):
I think we have a tip. I would give some of our listeners, there is a subject that we talked about before Kathryn, but if we are, um, and hopefully we are every time knowledge of the claim, the adviser’s got a very important part to play act claim stage as well in terms of the, the ongoing financial advice that comes out of that. And my experience is is that if you are part of that advice, you, uh, quite possibly get a more receptive audience from it, from the customer in order to tell their story out loud, because it’s not just about the claim, it’s what you do with that claim. Um, so, you know, there’s a off quoted stat that most criticalness that payouts does do not, uh, pay out the, the full mortgage even though sometimes they’re set up to. Okay. And I think that’s good advice by the way.

Roy (28:21):
Um, so I think there’s, there’s sometimes some scenarios there that the worth talking about the after advice. Um, I want to, I want to take you back Kevin because um, you and I sort of started off, uh, you know, talking to the press roughly at the same time. So let let’s go back. Uh, dare I say, 20 years. Um, um, bear in mind, a lot of our listeners are, you know, going to be sort of late twenties, early thirties, uh, where we were then. Uh, and, and, and just sort of give ourselves some, some advice if, if I can, why should a, uh, you know, let’s take a 28 year old adviser, who’s been doing it for a few years and, and, and, and, and enjoys the job and is passionate about it. Why should they potentially start talking to the press?

Kevin (28:59):
The, I think that the, the reasons are almost endless. Um, you’ve got obviously brand awareness, you’ve got lead generation. Um, a lot of this is good content for social media and SEO, um, which raises, you know, the, the profile of, of your website increases your social media profile. That itself leads through into things that award entries now, certainly in terms of my own personal experience, my, when I moved into PR my job actually changed again, quite significantly and quite quickly, I was at a, a cover magazine round table. Um, I remember reading about them. I think they were called silver briefings or something like that. Yeah.

Roy (29:39):
Silver briefings. That’s

Kevin (29:40):
Right. Yeah. Do you remember those? I do. You’d have about 10 people around the table. It’d be sponsored by an insurer couple of hours. Um, couple of advisers would go along. The journalists would of course make notes. It would come out a month or two later as a pullout in the center of the magazine, about 10, 12 pages. And I remember reading those and, and I had people on a pedestal. You know, these were, you know, the Nick Cohens and the Roger Edwards of, of the world. And, you know, and, and I thought, oh, I looked up to them. Um, and then one day I got invited to attend one. Um, and you know, you, you have imposter syndrome and you feel nervous and you prep and you prep and you prep and you go along. And what happened was, I, I remember leaving that, that round table and going to the pub as you do with, with some of the insurers.

Kevin (30:27):
Um, and I was life search again were, were very small. They very new, we didn’t even have broker consultants at that time with every insurer. And I, I won’t name the insurer, but I was talking to a head of protection and I explained how it worked. This is what we do this, the background and how, how it all works. And I came, I left that pub with 10% more commission, um, for life search, uh, which sounds very, um, you know, rather to the unprofessional, but it was pretty much the same as having a, a, a meeting with the insurer. And I, I drafted an email, um, to Tom that that said, there’s a job in this Tom, the PR profile. Isn’t just about PR it’s about the insurer relationships and commissioners, but one of them, it leads through to better service. You get into product development, underwriting claims that are better, or even just getting a broker consultant, because you might not have one.

Kevin (31:16):
And it raises your profile internally with insurers, all of this, a little 1% that all a up to better service, better underwriting, better products, better pricing, um, and all things that benefit the customer and benefit the industry. So my job changed and it became almost 50% PR and 50% what was called life, office relations and development. So I got to know every insurer, every insurer didn’t even know, re insurers were a thing, um, at a very senior level and the whole thing blended together very well. Now I’m not saying that you have to make a full time job out of this. But I think in my experience, I’ve worked with a lot of people who value PR in very different ways. Some people just get it. They know that if you are mentioned in a headline or a certain story in a certain publication with the right audience that will benefit your business, they know it’s a given, um, others will look for more tangible evidence. They want to see clicks. They want to see ROI. They want to see some financial provable benefit, um, which is isn’t always easy when it comes to PR in, in, in the modern world. And what we tend to look at is, is, is that, are you in the right publications about the right topics with the right audiences often enough? And you tend to know that the benefits flow from there onwards, uh, in a whole multitude of, of reasons.

Roy (32:44):
I think you make a great point. Now, something I hadn’t quite realised about, if you do this in the press, eventually the insurers will start knocking the door and, and asking you for your views on product development. And I think one of the things that, you know, we’ve talked about lots of times haven’t covered is, is, is the, the distributor, uh, voice being heard by the manufacturers. Actually, I, I suspect all three of us on numerous occasions have actually sat down with, uh, with insurers who have said, what do you think should be changed? And I think that’s part of the, uh, it’s no good asset outside industry just consistently moaning about, you know, we need innovation and product development if we’re not prepared to, uh, come up with some is. And I guess if you, if you raise your profile in, in the press, Kevin, then people know who to come and talk to. Yeah,

Kevin (33:26):
Absolutely. Absolutely. A hundred percent.

Kathryn (33:29):
I think it’s, um, it’s really interesting. So I think, you know, in terms of, we’ve been just like assessing our marketing and PR and everything and, you know, recently, and, uh, and what I think I’ve figured out, I think from us is I think we seem to have done quite a lot of PR, but I didn’t even realize it. It was PR in a sense, it’s just kind like being okay if I’m just going to turn up and do this and chat to this person over here. Um, but I think as well, you know, quite a lot of people, they might find it, you know, for a number of reasons, you could have you one man band who start like thinking like, well, I’m, I’m working like a 50 hour week anyway, how can I possibly do any more of this? And you might then also have someone else who’s part of a bigger organization thinking, well, how can I do this myself?

Kathryn (34:06):
And I think this is probably, you know, along the lines of if someone’s in that kind of a position where they are part of a much bigger organization. Um, Kevin, I imagine that they’re probably more along the lines of, you know, in terms of increasing their profile, probably developing, you know, trying to speak to so account managers developing their knowledge with their, um, but I imagine as well, getting, um, quite clear guidance from their company’s social media advisers and PR teams as to what they can and can’t say, and social and, and what’s good. What, isn’t good. Things like that.

Kevin (34:35):
Yeah. To an extent, um, as a, there’s a bunch of points here. I think one, one is, I mean, most of our clients are small. Most of their client relationship starts more. Um, and then they, they either tend to achieve what they need to achieve and it becomes self, um, you know, self-purporting, um, or we, we continue and, and we grow, um, a second point that it’s interesting, I think for, for listeners, potentially to understand is, is when you are reading a comment from somebody in the press or, or a blog or a feature that person may have written it all themselves, they may have never even seen it. Both truths exist. The majority is somewhere in between. Um, it’ll be a combination of what that person wants to say that may have gone through some marketing or PR process to improve it, to make it better, to make it punchier, make it shorter, whatever it may have been.

Kevin (35:24):
And I, I know lots of people who fall under both camps have where 99% of what you read in their name, labor room. I know other people who don’t even see what goes out with their name and, and their picture next to it. So the point about I’m already very busy. It can be fitted around you and how much time you’ve got a lot of what we do is it might be a quick 20 minute phone call or a bunch of bullet points on an email. Here’s what I want to say. Here’s a rant, here’s a brain dump. Can you turn that into something that’s usable? Um, that will get us, you know, get a content and, and get eyes on, on what we do. Um, but I think the bigger point here is something you touched on Kathryn, which is, well, is it PR or is it marketing?

Kevin (36:06):
And this is a fascinating one for me and, and for people in PR, because I think, um, a lot of the time, it’s easy to assume that PR is a page in the marketing handbook. Um, and well PR well, that’s a press for release. Um, I see it differently for me. The public is everyone and relations is everything. It’s every possible way that you interact with somebody and not just a customer, but your industry and even your own people. So a phrase that we hear and use a lot is about integrated, uh, content. And that’s, you know, about having your social media and your blogs and your website and your PR, your press releases and your internal communications, all aligned, all talking to each other, all timed accordingly, which is of course, a, a perfection that rarely exists because it’s incredibly hard to do. But for me, the truth is that marketing is a form of PR is how, how is everything that you stand for?

Kevin (37:00):
It’s your E ethics? It’s, it’s the optics of how things are seen by different audiences. And quite often another phrase that’s used is, is, is different messages for different audiences. And that can be right. It can be very easy to say, well, I’ll put this out on social and therefore that word as an award entry, it works for internal coms. And when it can work for, for a press comment, sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it doesn’t work that way at all, but I think, you know, it, it’s important to consider PR as being more than just a fresh release.

Roy (37:33):
Kevin, I’d also add to that. Um, uh, and again, we’ve seen this hundreds of times, localized are, is as important as nationalize PR sometimes dear, um, in, uh, you know, within your local business community, you know, potential introduces, you know, and there’s lots of examples, you know, where people have found the local mortgage broker because of their PR or found the local wealth manager, their PR. So, so it doesn’t always have to be as, as vast as sometimes it’s portrayed.

Kevin (37:58):
Absolutely. I mean, you know, sign posting and, and, and partnerships, and introducing is a further benefit that we, we’ve not touched on so far. Um, and, and the local press is thriving. Um, you know, these days there’s hundreds of them, um, from the bigger ones, like the evening standard and the Manchester evening news to, to, to many, many below that they’re thriving in often in a digital environment. And in fact, that’s actually where most of our trade journalists come from. Most of the trade journalists that join the financial services sector often come from the local and the regional press. It’s a, it’s a good hunting ground for recruitment.

Kathryn (38:32):
I was going to say, um, just sort like going on, I think a little bit from there is when we talk about like the local and the national and things. So obviously, I mean, we’ve got to talk about awards Kevin here. So there’s no way we can avoid speaking about awards and entries and different things. And, um, and obviously, you know, for us, we are, you know, at the moment we obviously we do national awards, but we’re also doing quite a few local awards now as well, which obviously, as you know, for a lot of people, it’s a much nicer on the, uh, on the budget to, sorry, do some local awards where you’re not traveling too far. And it’s nice obviously again, to try and get your name out there, you know, not just for, for clients, but also potentially recruitment as well. Um, I think, you know, sometimes people do wonder though, should we do the, the awards or not?

Kathryn (39:14):
I mean, obviously we enter quite a few awards. It is, it is really lovely to win awards. I don’t think anybody can doubt that if they’ve, you know, say that they’ve, they’ve won something that it’s not felt like, yes, absolutely. This is amazing. Um, I’ve also had some other people before turn around and say, well, actually, you know, these awards, it’s more to do with, you know, how many bums on seats you can get into the, into the world as to who’s going to win and things like that. Um, so there is kind of a bit of a, you know, there’s huge positivity, but you do sometimes get those little grumbles in the background as well for some people. So I suppose the big thing is what are your thoughts on awards should advisers be doing it? You know, is it a case of, you know, if you buy 10 tables, you going to in every single award in there what’s, uh, how does it work

Kevin (40:00):
Well? Um, I’m sure that the, that all types of award entry process exist, uh, somewhere. Um, so I, I can only speak for the ones that I I they know of, but that’s just about all of them. Uh, in, in our, in our industry know, I I’ve written entry is the lost one judged just about all of them at one point, um, or, or another. Um, what I would say is, is award entry are well worth doing, um, for all the reasons we’ve touched on. Um, it’ll get you taken more seriously with insurers. It’s great content for your social media and your website. It’s great for internal morale. It’s good for lead generation. Um, all of those things are, are good. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s good PR um, the, the question is about what do you then do about it? It’s under of some of the myths, just about all the myths are myths.

Kevin (40:52):
Um, the one about, well, you know, I, I haven’t bought a table, so I won’t win. Um, I, I think, well, you know, tends to take place a couple of months before an event happens and nobody knows who’s taken a table at that point. Um, so how would you, how would there possibly be a link between buying a table and winning an award? Um, what does happen is that if you’ve won and you’re not going, you might get an email or a phone call strongly encouraging you to go and strongly encouraging you, maybe to, you might want to buy a table with a nudge and a wink, um, that may well happen, which I don’t think is, is untoward in any way. That’s, that’s a decision that’s already been made, but the event managers want the winner there on the night for obvious reasons. It’s good for it’s good for all parties.

Kevin (41:40):
So that will happen. Um, so certainly there might be times where you might then look around and think, ah, they had a table. That’s why they won the truth is a million times the opposite know they won and therefore they may have taken going to table afterwards. But even that I would say is quite quite rare. Uh, and, and few and far between, um, you know, in terms of tips for reward entries, of course, there’s a whole, there’s a whole bunch of them, um, you know, take it seriously and back it up is the main one. I literally read a, a, a bunch of awards very recently for an event that’s coming up next month. And there’s really great claims in there. We did this, I did that. And then it goes on to talk about something else I’m thinking, ah, well, prove it to me. I’m not just going to believe it. Because you said it in an award entry. I want to see some proof, some evidence of what you’ve done. Um, personally, I’m a, I’m a stick that a stats and evidence and ROI. Um, so if you’re going to say that I, the, you know, you achieved something, well, give us some proof of, of what it was you achieved

Roy (42:38):
Careful that’s, uh, that that’s AB absolutely great onwards. Um, and some, some, some real insightful stuff there. And I, and I think people should think, should think very carefully about it because for me awards and PR go hand in hand, um, but just ski over a little bit to like a bit more generic, the protection market at the moment, you know, we’re just hopefully coming at this dreadful pandemic. How, how, how does it feel generally to you? Um,

Kevin (43:05):
Mixed I think, um, I think there’s some good things happening. I think a lot of things are of course from the back burner during the well, hopefully was the worst of the pandemic in terms of product development and technology. Um, that, that we now start to see accelerated on the flip side, you know, it does seem that the, you know, interest in inquiries are, are down. Um, and I suspect that’s a combination of, you know, the, the, the feeling, the pinch in people’s pockets financially, um, there’s inflation left, right. And center, obviously the, the pandemic fear has been replaced by a very different kind of fear now globally. Um, although I think, you know, subconsciously did the pandemic sort of send a message that, that, you know, are people invincible? Um, is there something subconsciously going on where people think, well, it didn’t get me.

Kevin (44:00):
Um, so I, I therefore don’t need to think about anything like this. I’m not saying that’s a conscious thought process. I just, maybe I think this is a grudge purchase. Our industry has. It’s not something you want to think about and what to an act on. So I think quite often people look for reasons not to do thing. You, you look for reason to justify not having to do anything. Oh, it won’t pay out. Our insurers are all, all nasty to deal with. It’s too expensive. I can’t afford it. All of these things sit there somewhere in the conscious or the as, um, as a reason not to do anything. So I think it, it, it’s mixed. Um, I think the industry will have a challenging year. Um, but the question is, is it a case of, you know, sort of one step back to take two steps forward?

Roy (44:46):
I mean, you’ve mentioned collaboration a few times. Do, do you, do you think that we are now more collaborative than we were 10 years ago?

Kathryn (44:59):
If everyone could see Kevin’s face right now, Stomped?

Roy (45:04):
Um,

Kevin (45:05):
I honestly don’t know I’ll be more collaborative than we were 10 years ago, honestly. Don’t know. Um, mean it’s difficult to answer that question without referring to something like seven families, you would think you would like to think that seven FA um, showed an ink thing of what could be done if we did something like that properly. And by, I, kind of mean, you know, with, with, with, with full time people running a project and, and with the sort of funding that a two year campaign meets, um, you know, effectively the, the, the marketing and PR budget for seven families was 50,000 pounds over two years. Um, you know, the, the, and there are campaigns for 50,000 pounds a month that don’t always break through. So, you know, I, I think it showed what, what could be done. And you would like to think that that would therefore encourage an industry to go do it again. Yeah. Um, and there was no sure of people that want to do it again. Um, but not enough of them. Um, I think, and, you know, you, you kind of think, well, if sales do go down this year and next year, then maybe just maybe, um, you know, lows who, who, who really do hold the pocket strings might kind of think, yes, we do need something now. Um, and maybe we’re out of options and we’ll go back to something like seven families.

Kathryn (46:42):
I think we’ve got to  be conscious as well. You know, that, especially with, um, obviously everyone’s going to be really watching their energy bills right now. And, you know, we’re seeing lots of things. I mean, ours has gone up a silly amounts. Um, it’s more than doubled and, you know, follow lot of people that is massively going to affect whether or not they have the choice between being warm or eating, let alone paying for an insurance policy that as you always say, it kind of sits in a drawer and you hope you never use it. So it’s, you know, in terms of what people’s, you know, very much their financial needs are in, in the immediate term versus that term, it’s going to be very difficult for a lot of people. And, um, and I think that as advisers and insurers, we’re all going to need to really prepare to support people who are possibly going to be facing very, very tough times ahead.

Kevin (47:29):
Absolutely. Um, and it, it’s going to be interesting challenge for the industry in terms of flexibility and, and what we do in terms of offering, you know, reductions in cover that can be reinstated without underwriting, you know, I know premium holidays or whatever it is that the industry can can come up with, but you also don’t want to be too proactive about that because it might encourage people to reduce cover that wouldn’t have done otherwise. So you, you almost want it to be driven by the policy holder to say, look, we’re, we’re, we’re struggling. We’re probably going to have to cancel this and then to have some options available, um, as opposed to saying, Hey, millions and millions of people, you can have life insurance, um, and, and save some money cause that would possibly be counterproductive for the bigger picture.

Kathryn (48:16):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for, for coming on Kevin. It’s been lovely hearing all of these things, and I think we’ve gone around quite a few different areas in terms of PR and, um, and it’s, uh, obviously been really good to get your insights. Um, next time, I’m going to have Matt Rann back with me and we’re going to be talking about, um, specific risks again and going to a deep dive with them about how they mix with insurance. If you would like a remind of the next episode, please drop me a message on social media or visit the website, practical hyphen protection dot co dot UK. And don’t forget that if you listen to this as part of your work, and you can claim a CPD certificate on the website, thanks to our sponsors, octo members. So thank you again, Kevin.

Kevin (48:56):
You’re very welcome. Thank you.