Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey

Brand Inoculation

The New Jersey’s legislature was leering at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey’s (HBCBSNJ) reserves as a strategy for balancing the state’s 2006 budget. A number of legislators openly criticized the not-for-profit brand as being greedy and out of touch with the citizens it was chartered to serve. The campaign that was developed in response featured New Jersey citizens in a word-of-mouth production that credibly demonstrated HBCBSNJ’s uncompromising devotion to serving the healthcare needs of the people of New Jersey.

We helped people tell their stories in print, TV and online, facilitating their storytelling, but never scripting it. The result was a powerfully authentic campaign that gave voice to the people of New Jersey and unified BCBSNJ employees with a new sense of pride.

The legislative season ended with the HBCBSNJ reserves intact and there has been no subsequent discussion of pursuing this budget balancing strategy since then.

Advertising Performance

New Jersey is a fiercely competitive health insurance marketplace with HBCBSNJ doing pitched battle with United, Aetna, AmeriHealth and Oxford. As a result, it is a strategic imperative to develop unambiguous quantitative understandings of how effective its advertising is in comparison with the competition’s. Our agency contract includes incentives triggered by the results of an annual research study in which 600 New Jersey residents rate/rank the advertising from HBCBSNJ and the national insurers doing business in the state.

In the three years since the campaign launched, HBCBSNJ advertising has consistently outperformed that of each of the competitors across an extensive range of communications dimensions.