Venture Insurance Programs Hits a Winner with ‘Errant Ball’ Commercial

National Program Administrator Venture Insurance Programs (www.ventureprograms.com) recently came out swinging with a 30-second video spot on www.insurancejournal.com designed to target agents and brokers with information about Venture’s five lines of business – the golf industry, the hospitality industry, technology, life and science and community banking.

According to Rich Look, director of communications for Venture, the 30-second spot, “Errant Ball,” is the initial time a program administrator has used an online video spot to interact with agents and brokers.

The video spot features the path of a golf ball to highlight the industries underwritten and served by Venture. The errant ball travels over a golf green, across a driveway, into the lobby of a resort, disrupting a bell hop and laptop, and coming to rest in a restaurant, but ultimately ending up in an x-ray lab.

Look told Insurance Journal COO Mitch Dunford during a recent audio interview, that the ad concept “was a lot of fun to work on. We didn’t have a TV spot, but this allowed us to take the web to the next level,” Look noted. “We mapped out what we wanted to do, put together the pricing, and at the end of the day, we came up with a very entertaining concept that we hope stands the test of time.”

Look said the spot came together in about two weeks, and Venture management was supportive of the idea. “The only thing they asked me is ‘Can you fit this within your budget?”

Industry feedback to the commercial has been very positive, according to Look. “The response has been phenomenal to say the least,” Look told Insurance Journal last week. “It seems from our standpoint that everyone has seen it. As the first web TV spot of its kind, that is targeting the P/C insurance trade, we knew it would get noticed.”

According to Look, the company anticipated a 0.25 percent click-through rate to its Web site and created a landing page requiring the viewer to answer just one question related to how familiar they were with Venture.

“In the first 10 days, we surpassed 150,000 views,” Look commented. “Of these, we had 215 answer our question. And of these, we had over 70 provide contact information and request additional information.”

The company’s question was: How familiar are you with Venture Insurance Programs? Forty-seven percent responded they were not familiar at all with Venture; 44 percent said they were vaguely familiar but have never had any contact; one percent said they were familiar but haven’t had the opportunity to send potential accounts; three percent said they were very familiar and had sent submissions but haven’t written business; and four percent said they were extremely familiar with the company, and they were a client or partner.

The launch of “Errant Ball” coincides with Insurance Journal’s expansion of its video news service, featuring a series of interviews with industry leaders.

“We applaud Venture Programs for being first to take the bold step into video advertising,” Dunford added. “Based on our Internet tracking data the response to Venture’s ‘Errant Ball’ ad has been exceptional. We are confident in the near future more and more insurance industry advertisers will take advantage of this new advertising medium.”

The video spot was created by Zelten LLC (www.zelten.com), a web development and media production firm out of Philadelphia.