Bringing Sun Life’s Brand Performance Into the Light

Helping a new CMO and marketing leadership team understand the Sun Life brand and hold its partners to a higher standard.

Situation
A new CMO and marketing leadership brought renewed focus to Sun Life’s brand performance. The team needed to understand what set Sun Life apart from competitors and judge the work of both inherited agencies and the partners it brought on board.

Opportunity
Give new leadership a tailored way to evaluate partners, strengthen the brand and identify which proof points made its promise credible.

Solution
Peacock Nine identified the factors that drove brand performance and distinguished Sun Life competitively, examining awareness, perceptions, and purchase or recommendation intent among customers and insurance producers.

Complementary research tested the credibility and appeal of potential reasons to believe in Sun Life’s brand promise. This gave the leadership team evidence for which claims could support communications with customers and producers.

Peacock Nine also built a longitudinal brand health tracker. It gave the new leadership team a shared yardstick for holding legacy agencies and PR firms, and the partners new leadership brought on, to the same objectives, and it tied all marketing activity to the brand measures that mattered most.

Impact
Sun Life gained an ongoing way to see whether its marketing was delivering and reinforcing its differentiation. Together, the brand tracker and proof-point work supported message development, partner accountability and sharper decisions through a leadership transition.

Within a year, Sun Life’s U.S. business moved into the top 10 among variable annuity providers for brand and advertising awareness among advisors, up from 14th and 23rd, according to Cogent Research’s Advisor Brandscape study.