CMO Chats with Alexandra Lewis, CMO of Reinsurance at Aon

We continue our knowledge-sharing mission through a series of interviews with marketing leaders from all over the world, and are thrilled to have Alex with us today. Alex, tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at Aon.

I have the huge privilege of being CMO for part of the business that works with insurance companies, which is an absolutely fascinating industry. It’s all about how we bring more solutions to communities, families, and businesses across the world to create a more resilient environment. That’s what I love about this sector: how we use marketing and communications to bring new insights to insurance companies that are going to help them better manage their risks and, by doing so, better help their customers.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into marketing? 

I’ve always known that I wanted to do something creative. From about the age of 13 and 14, I was out there getting work experience at local TV companies, our local newspapers, and working in advertising agencies. I loved the idea of being creative, whether that was through writing, bringing people together, or experimenting with new and different ways of working. Slowly, as the years went on, I started identifying my niche more around the PR area, and that gave me grounding in how to bring a good strategy together. How do you think about what you’re trying to achieve, who your audiences are, and what those messages are, before you even get stuck into the even more exciting bit, which is looking at the tactics and bringing those campaigns to life? I’ve always been hugely grateful for my time working in PR because when I moved into marketing, I was thinking about how to drive everything from a compelling story and making sure everything flows beautifully from that point.

What is your main marketing focus at the moment?

Catastrophes. One of the biggest risks to insurance companies is natural disasters, especially with the changing climate. Obviously, if we think about the impact on people, it’s a critical role that our industry plays. I mean, we’ve just seen this year alone devastating wildfires in California and a number of losses in Myanmar following the earthquake. 

Awful events, and we need to think as a society, how do we best manage those? Insurance companies help provide that capital, but also think about ways to try and mitigate some of those risks at the same time. That’s where we’re partnering with our insurer clients to help them think of new tactics and ways of doing that. So that might be catastrophe models, using innovative technology to understand how frequently or how severe a particular peril might be, and understanding what the impact of climate is on those as well. That’s the other really interesting piece, too. But also thinking, where do we invest going forward? Is it always reacting after an event, or what can we do in advance, particularly around building better to begin with, to prevent buildings, for example, from collapsing quite so impactfully after an earthquake?

How do you define success in marketing?

First of all, you’ve got to enjoy what you do. That’s the most important thing. For me personally, success is about bringing a brilliant team together, being able to deliver for the business, and understanding what we need to achieve as AON to achieve our growth goals. It’s also about putting things from the perspective of our clients and getting that take-up and engagement, which is really important to me. But then also, how do we link that engagement for clients, knowing that we’re providing insights that are useful, back to how we protect our revenue and also how we drive our pipeline going forward?

What would you say is the biggest challenge marketers face today? 

It’s got to be around how we prove our ROI. We do some amazing work as a marketing communications profession, and the impact can be really visible sometimes, but how do you put that into tangible numbers? As we crack that, not just individual companies, but as an entire profession, as an industry, that will help to further increase the value of the roles and the strategic seats at the table.

Which marketing strategies have yielded the most success in terms of engagement and lead generation? 

It always has to be a mix, and we take full advantage of the array of tactics and channels that we have at our disposal. Cyber exposure is not a thing. It’s really important to use a range of tactics in every campaign and think about what you can effectively measure for each of those different channels. What I’ve particularly enjoyed, when I think back to starting years ago in this industry, was getting my press cuttings through by fax every morning. That’s great, but how do you measure, track, and benchmark? I love working with social media at the moment, just for those real-time responses and the stats to prove the impact that you’re having. Also, we’ve seen huge engagement through, for example, our thought leadership and being able to drive those conversations. 

Whether we’re looking at what’s changing in the reinsurance world, what those market dynamics are, or providing data around catastrophes, for example, being one of those key risks, taking advantage of this wealth of data that we have in the business always helps well to engage with our clients.

Can you give us an idea of who your ICP is at Aon?

We have several, so it’s very easy to say we target insurance companies, but the really interesting thing is how we really try to break that down and how we prioritise within that as well. One of our primary target personas has been the reinsurance buyer, but as we build more strategic relationships with the business, we want to elevate that more to a C-suite level, particularly around the CEO. We can provide fantastic reinsurance programs that will help to protect the balance sheets of our customers, but actually, we want to try and think more strategically, not just about protection, but how do you grow your business at the same time? We’re working with the C-suite, who can have a more holistic look, so we can support across every aspect of their business. That might range from how they manage a cyber attack, because of the huge amount of personal information that a company might have, right through to how they manage their talent going forward, again, thinking about those key job profiles, but also looking at different segments. We will work with the world’s largest insurance companies, but equally, we’re also targeting smaller regional insurance companies, particularly in the US at the moment, where not only are they facing risks such as hurricanes and tornados, but also increased litigation across the country, and of course, the progress that we’re seeing across the news at the moment.

I’d like to ask you three questions regarding events. My first question is, what’s the most successful event or engagement piece you’ve hosted, and why? 

For the last five years, we’ve hosted AON’s reinsurance renewal season. What I love about this event is that it’s a series of global roadshows of industry conferences that we do, but we also complement them with virtual sessions. How this works is that wherever you are in the world, and that could be from the US through to Singapore, via Monte Carlo at those industry conferences, we want to bring a consistent, premium experience to all our clients. We do that by having a consistent message but investing in the branding and the way that we try to bring that experience to life, for example, within our Better Decisions Labs, where we can help showcase what’s new and innovative in the industry in relation to the needs of our clients. What has also worked well, because not everyone can be at those conferences, we’ve also hosted, alongside that, a series of fireside chats. That’s giving an opportunity for our clients across the world to get access to some of our senior leaders, but also their peers across the industry, to get their perspectives on some of the challenges that they’re facing today and possibly some of the strategies that they’re using to overcome those challenges.

What are the most significant challenges you face when hosting events? 

Probably the biggest challenge is that events bring a huge amount of opportunities, but it doesn’t necessarily mean your budget is increasing in correlation to that. So it’s always how do you deliver more on the same or less budget, always thinking about how you can be innovative, what your clients are going to truly appreciate, and how you do that within those constraints of the budget.

What career advice would you give to anyone starting in the marketing industry? 

Be connected to everyone in the business. That’s one of the really exciting foundations: build up your network and understand as much as possible. That will allow you to be the connector. What I think is so important about that is that it can be quite easy as a marketing function to be drawn into silos. So today, we’re working with this team, or we’re working on this product. If you can step back and look holistically across the business and then try to imagine those solutions in response to what your clients need, you will not only deliver better insights and solutions for your clients, but you will also help bring together a more connected business to deliver those solutions.

What do you believe is the biggest opportunity for CMOs today that might not have been available in the past? 

Data has to be at the crux of that, and also AI. I do think that there are foundations of marketing that will always remain true: thinking about your business priorities and putting your customer first. But using this data to improve on what we do is an extraordinary opportunity. Whether that’s how your campaigns are performing, for example, how you’re engaging with the media, or how else you’re engaging with your own colleagues as well, how do you bring more insights to them? Data has to be almost like an integrated day-to-day part of the role. Also, how do we match that with AI to help us tease out further tactics based on the results of those learnings?

What does the future of marketing look like? 

Again, it comes back to data and AI, and also having a more integrated role in the running of the business, making sure that CRMs are truly an integral part of running a company, and continuing to have influence at board level in terms of how we effectively engage with our clients and continue to bring them relevant products at the right time.

How would you describe the role of the CMO in one word, and why? 

Empowering. That’s something that I love about my job: what lies ahead and how you can have an impact on changing that. That’s not just about the impact you can have within the business to help continually grow that, but it’s also about what you can deliver to your customers, how you can bring something new to clients, and how you can help advise them more effectively by bringing the right content to them. Also, particularly working with this exciting dynamic insurance industry, we can ultimately help to enhance and enrich lives around the world and our communities by working with governments and businesses alike.