Changing Advertising summit 2011: Speaker interview Amanda Mackenzie
Name:
Amanda Mackenzie
Current location:
The City of London
Twitter name:
@amandamack6

In 30 words or less tell us who you work for and what you do:
I work for Aviva and am responsible for all Aviva group marketing, communications and public policy.
Website you can't live without?  
Predictable, but Google.
What are the guiding principles that dictate your marketing message at Aviva?
Recognition is at the heart of everything we do. We aim to combine our expertise with empathy to treat our customers as people, not as policies.
This translates through our marketing campaigns across the world in different ways. Our global marketing campaign 'You are the Big Picture', features portraits and stories of the people most important to us – our customers, employees, business partners and communities – and really brings to life individual recognition. It has a number of elements - public projections, digital innovation and a renewed pledge to keep raising funds to help street children in India through people's participation in the campaign. The campaign in the US is about 'youmanity'.
How would you judge the success of the well publicised re-brand of the company? What lessons did you learn from that process?
We are more than two years into the re-branding journey now and I'm relieved and pleased to say we have enjoyed a lot of success and recognition along the way. Positive chatter about Aviva quadrupled following the rebrand and our customer satisfaction ratings have since doubled. We worked very hard to communicate the vision of a more united, customer focused organisation to our people first. The extensive discussion and engagement that helped us get it right inside the organisation, gave us a great platform to market the re-brand to the world, helping people to understand its benefits. While we of course embrace this success – our customer numbers are higher than ever before – we are all still very aware that the job is by no means complete.
Predictions for 2012?
I think almost everything in 2012 will be focused on the Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and rightly so – the limelight and fanfare the events will bring presents an enormous opportunity for brands to really engage people and to be proud as a nation. We have been supporting British athletics for over ten years now so we're looking forward to seeing British success at the Olympics. Of course, the celebrations will also come against the backdrop of the global economy continuing to fluctuate. The financial services industry needs to continue to focus on rebuilding faith among those who felt they had lost trust in financial services companies during the financial crisis. Financial markets need to be less volatile and as a nation we need to come to terms with and accept several years of slow down and economic austerity.
And finally, what can we expect from you at the Guardian Changing Advertising Summit?
I'm really looking forward to the Summit; it has a great line-up. I will be focusing on issues close to my heart – examining how financial services brands can engage with customers, drawing on the success of 'You are the big picture'. We launched the original campaign across multiple markets in October 2010 and it's a fantastic example of how our recognition-based strategy allows consistent messages to filter through all of our communications and marketing activity. I'm very happy to answer any questions, which usually makes things more interesting.
Amanda Mackenzie speaks at the Changing Advertsing Summit on 20 October 2011.