The project was awarded to AMPC based on a 14-year relationship that the agency, a Wisdom Keys Group member company, has with the former SA Eagle and now with Zurich.
Chris West-Russell, executive producer and MD of AMPC, says the brief was straight-forward. “We needed to bid farewell to SA Eagle in a way that justified the deep-seated connection and affection felt for that brand by thousands of employees, former employees, clients and business partners. We needed to introduce Zurich in a manner befitting its global status and its significance as a serious contender in the South African insurance and risk sector.”
Zurich Insurance Company South Africa got it right, he says. They prioritised and invested in internal stakeholder communication to ensure that each employee and business partner took ownership of the new Zurich brand, felt included in the new entity and knew that the old brand's heritage was valued, was honoured and would endure.
“It is dangerous to undermine that significance of emotional attachments to brands,” West-Russell says. “Communicating only cognitively and intellectually to people who are loyal and who feel a deep-seated connection to a brand devalues that connection. It alienates the very people whose allegiance is crucial during times of transition.”
This was the first time in the 74-year-history of the old SA Eagle that every single employee from all over South Africa came together (or was given an opportunity to come together) in one venue to celebrate the end of an era and welcome their new brand into the country and into their professional and personal lives. More than 1000 people attended the employee launch event on 30 July 2007 and the same number attended the business partner launch event on 31 July.
Zurich was welcomed in an extravaganza of performance music, film and oratory that took months to plan and rehearse.
The African Motion Picture Company used more than 70 drummers and flag-wavers. The agency commissioned the production of a massive drum; filmed its making in Venda and brought it to Gallagher Estate in Johannesburg to take centre stage as a symbol of SA Eagle, a South African icon that had ceded its name to a global superbrand but that had left a profound heritage: a heritage that would continue to reverberate and to be felt; and that would be honoured by the people now assuming the status and pride of the Zurich's international brand.
The extravaganza of light, music and dance dramatised African paradigms of rhythm, soul and warmth and juxtaposed them to European paradigms of the cavalier, of precision, and of pre-eminence. It brought the two apparently distinct paradigms together into a unique Afro-Euro hybrid that celebrated the best of both traditions and that created a forum in which employees and business partners were able to welcome the Zurich brand, embrace it, adopt its values and take complete ownership of it.
It was, according to West-Russell, an unqualified success. Every credit should go to the South African Zurich team for acknowledging the vital importance of internal stakeholders in the audience mix.
“Brands must live and grow internally if they are to succeed in the marketplace. Internal communication must be sincere and must reflect the value of internal stakeholders to the brand.
“It was strategically brilliant of Zurich to invest the time, energy and money it did in the brand migration. This investment all but guarantees the success of the new business.”
