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Insurtech is making an impact in the news agenda right now, and if you’re one of the companies involved in this exciting sector then you need to be aware of this.

 

A catch-all term for platforms and technology that is driving fundamental changes in insurance, ‘Insurtech’ is being covered by publications and outlets such as the Telegraph, CNBC, Reuters and the like.

 

While some aren’t keen on the clumsy portmanteau, what we can all agree on is that Insurtech is set to have a massively disruptive – but largely positive – effect on the insurance industry.

I thought the Lions were in New Zealand at the moment.

That’s rugby’s British and Irish Lions, who are playing a three-test series against the All Blacks at the moment. Cannes Lions has nothing to do with sport, although there will be a bit of a scrum in the south of France, all the same.

No, The International Festival of Creativity, to give it its proper title, is the advertising industry’s annual shindig, where agencies and brands show off their best works, hear speeches and do back-room deals in the small town by the sea.

We recently wrote about how working with PR agencies can benefit companies in the fintech sector.

But what should fintech firms be looking for in a PR agency? In this guest post, we asked Clarity client Sophie Guibaud, Vice President European Expansion at Fidor Bank, to outline five qualities she looks for in a PR agency.

 

Transparency

Having worked with PR agencies in the past, I’ve found that I really had to chase them to find out to find out about progress on different projects and to try and understand where their time was being spent, in order to justify the investment to top management.

It has been one of the fastest success stories in technology. “Adtech” – the collective name for platforms helping advertising buyers and sellers to target, trade and transact – has been booming.

In recent years, the sector has seen a flood of investment, as venture capitalists poured money in to a segment that facilitates the internet’s primary monetisation model.

If you’ve never heard of the term fintech then you are probably in the minority. It’s been in the media spotlight for several years now, sparked by a wave of innovative new businesses offering slick financial services to consumers, or enabling technologies to banks and retailers to enable them to operate more effectively.

The movement wasn’t self-conscious enough to describe itself as ‘fintech’ in the beginning – that tag came from the media. A portmanteau of the words ‘financial’ and ‘technology’, it describes any digital service or platform that supports or enables banking or financial services.

It is incredible to think that it was ever the case, but there once was a time when Venture Capitalists were perceived by entrepreneurs as almost mythical creatures – shy individuals who shunned publicity and were barely traceable online.

That clearly isn’t the case anymore as VCs jostle with each other to garner the most followers for their blogs and Twitter accounts. So why this sea change? What has happened in the VC world to bring this about, and crucially do VCs really need to employ PR companies?

When engaging in a public relations campaign, companies tend to rely heavily on building an audience solely through media coverage, without capitalising on other ways to amplify their presence alongside it.

Social media, and Twitter more specifically, serves as a complementary tool that can be used to add greater value to media coverage achieved, helping to prolong the life of the coverage and bring further reach to a brand. Understanding the various tactics in using different social media channels can help a brand gain greater traction and attention, adding further value to any PR campaign.…

Since the company was formed in 2012, Clarity has worked with charities such as Alive and Kicking and Restless Development with the aim of doing our bit to make the world a better place. But as a small company trying to establish itself and grow a sustainable business it hasn’t always been easy to dedicate as much time and resource to charity as we would have liked.

This year, however, we are giving our charitable efforts new impetus and direction. We’ve now connected with partner charities in both the UK, where we were founded, and the US, where we have a fast-growing office in New York.

Another week, another brand forced to refer to the PR Crisis Communications Playbook. In fact, I would think that United Airlines’ copy of this publication is looking rather dog-eared by now, given the recent debacle surrounding appropriate clothing for passengers.

A much more serious PR crisis arose, though, when footage and witness accounts of an ugly incident involving a passenger being forcibly removed from an airplane for refusing to give up his seat on a flight that had been overbooked.…

Pepsi. Has there ever been a brand that lived more in the shadow of its closest rival? The perpetual challenger, which has provided us with “over 100 years of fun and refreshment”, finds itself in the public eye for all the wrong reasons right now.

The company has provoked some strong reactions – pretty much all of them negative – for a new campaign featuring Kendall Jenner. In the ad, Jenner leaves a protest of which she is part to present a can of Pepsi to a police officer.…

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