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Insurance Journal has launched IJ Broadcasting, an enhanced section on its Web site for multimedia content that will include video and audio interviews, current news and features, educational workshops and other industry-related information.
IJ Broadcasting is also pioneering by making online video advertising accessible to firms that are looking to reach a large but targeted audience of insurance professionals by video without the big expense associated with television advertising.
The first 2006 IJ Broadcasting interview is with Leigh Ann Pusey, senior vice president of the American Insurance Association. Pusey recalls how early last year Congress reacted to N.Y. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s charges against brokers and insurers and discusses why renewal of the federal terrorism reinsurance program came down to the wire. She also assesses how the industry’s legislative agenda fared on Capitol Hill in 2005 and looks ahead to 2006. The Pusey interview began airing on Jan. 4 and can be viewed here.
In the coming weeks, IJ Broadcasting will air exclusive interviews with Bob Rusbuldt, CEO of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, and IIABA’s lobbyist Charles E. Symington, Jr. In future weeks, online viewers can expect reports on what insiders and analysts are saying about the insurance industry’s economic outlook and what experts think about the possibility of a national catastrophe program.
Multiple formats
According to Mark Wells, publisher of Insurance Journal’s expanding network of print and electronic products, business publishers must deliver information in ways that people find both convenient and interesting.
“One media format no longer suffices,” says Wells. “People not only want easy access to information in the office, at home and on the road but they also want it presented in an interesting way in various formats from print to email to video.”
Insurance Journal has grown to become the leading source for insurance industry news. Its Daily Headlines newsletter was one of the industry’s first e-mail news publications and today it is the industry’s most widely-read. Its Web site has also become the most popular, attracting more than 2 million impressions a month, Wells noted. Two years ago, the company expanded its print publications and now boasts a network of magazines covering international, national and state news tailored to every region in the country. Last year, it launched a series of online “How to Write” educational video broadcasts on specific insurance coverages. Now, Insurance Journal is enhancing its commitment to broadcasting.
“We’ve been called the CNN of insurance news,” adds the publisher. “Insurance Journal is everywhere.”
Premiere advertiser
Wells said that just as insurance publishers must be willing to change how they deliver their information, so must advertisers to the industry experiment with multiple ways to get their messages across.
“Advertisers have to reach producers and executives who are multitasking and on the go. An increasing number of them are younger and raised on video, Web and email in addition to print,” he points out.
Venture Insurance Programs is the first advertiser on IJ Broadcasting. The West Chester, Pa.-based firm is a national program administrator for select industry-focused insurance packages. Venture’s 30-second video, “Errant Ball,” is believed to represent the first time a program administrator has used an online video spot to reach agents and brokers.
“Commercial TV spots are nothing new for large insurance carriers and brokerages trying to reach a mass audience, but we believe this web-based method is a great cost-effective alternative for carriers, program administrators and MGAs seeking to reach the brokerage community,” said Richard Look, director of communications for Venture Insurance Programs.
When viewers to www.insurancejournal.com click on the video news story in the IJ Broadcasting window, it opens with the 30-second Venture spot. The video features the path of a golf ball to highlight the industries Venture underwrites and serves. The errant ball travels over the green, skips across a driveway, rolls into the lobby of a resort, lands on a table in a restaurant, and completes its journey in an x-ray lab.
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