Direct Line Advertising Campaign

Last month Direct Line, a large motor/home insurance company in the UK, decided to launch an above the line advertising campaign against what are known as Aggregator sites.

Essentially these sites includes the likes of moneysupermarket & confused.com which allow you to enter in personal details and then provide you with quotes for your insurance; whilst acting as 3rd parties it’s fair to say that they are paid for new customers they send to the insurers, & may well promote some companies more, based on these payments.

Direct Line new above the line advertising has moved on from their direct attack on insurance comparison websites, Direct Line are said to be using the voices of Paul Merton and Stephen Fry to convey the same points in a slightly more subtle way.

Regardless of where you stand on the Direct Line versus Comparison Websites, it brings an interesting point to the surface - do customers really understand who’s who and how they work in the insurance market? It’s likely that Direct Line will use the “middle man” angle of attack on the comparison websites, but are customers aware of their association to RBS, or that going ‘direct’ to The AA isn’t taking them direct to the insurer?

Here’s another hum-dinger, once you’ve made your mind up on that point, do you think customers really care or need to care? As long as they’re getting the best (or most suitable) cover for the best price, does it matter who’s selling it to them and how that protection is provided?

Direct Line have claimed that these sites are simply middlemen and that the best way for customers to go is direct. In a Telegraph interview, Direct Line said the reasons for the ads were that they:

wanted to reassert our position that Direct Line always cuts out the middleman….By their very nature, these sites are focused primarily on price. As our ads make clear, we offer unique benefits which can’t easily be conveyed in an online best-buy table.

It therefore makes sense why Direct Line would refuse to use aggregator & comparisson sites