Promoting consumers’ health is a good long-term bet for any company, particularly a life insurance company.
Investment, retirement and life insurance brand John Hancock has seen great returns from prioritizing consumer health and wellness in the form of increased customer loyalty and engagement, CMO Lindsay Hanson told Chief Marketer.
According to Hanson, the company has seen boosts to brand affinity from initiatives like the John Hancock Vitality program, which launched in 2015. It offers the brand’s customers rewards for meeting wellness goals and engaging with health and fitness education. In October, John Hancock launched Vitality Pro, which rewards insurance agents when their customers engage with the program.
Also in October, John Hancock launched a new documentary series titled “Leaders in Longevity” that covers recent scientific advancements in health and how we understand aging. In addition to living on the John Hancock website and YouTube channel, clips from the series are featured in the brand’s video ads across CTV and social media.
Brand-building Through Education
Wellness education has been central to John Hancock’s brand identity for the past decade-plus, Hanson said.
The other insurance brands owned by John Hancock’s Canada-based parent company, Manulife, have likewise placed consumer wellness front and center in their marketing efforts. And there’s been a major trend around wellness marketing in the global insurance market for the past few years. Brands, including Aviva, Elevance Health and UnitedHealthcare, have pioneered the “gamification” of wellness by promoting health-tracking apps and the use of wearable health-monitoring devices, according to a 2024 study by GlobalData.
Manulife’s focus on health has translated into business results, too. It reported nearly $1.5 billion in Q3 revenue, up 10% year over year. That growth means Manulife is outpacing the global insurance market, which typically grows at about 2% annually, Hanson said.
However, Manulife’s U.S. revenue — which accounts for the John Hancock business line — was down 20% year over year in Q3. In its earnings report, Manulife attributed this downturn to unique challenges related to last year’s U.S. insurance claims market. But it noted that U.S. sales of insurance products were up 51% YOY.
That sales growth is being driven by John Hancock’s continued emphasis on wellness messaging, according to Hanson.
Hanson, who has worked for John Hancock since 2006, said she has been pushing for the brand to center health and wellness in its messaging since she was promoted to head of Vitality strategy and operations in 2016 and, more recently, in her role as CMO, which she’s held since 2023.
“For years, we’ve sold life insurance products to people for financial protection, but we did nothing to help them live a longer life,” she said.
Providing wellness education isn’t just a strategy that keeps John Hancock’s customers paying their life insurance premiums for longer, Hanson said. It helps foster connections with health-conscious consumers and makes the company’s life insurance brand messaging “about living versus dying.” And John Hancock keeps people engaged with the brand after they’ve passed the awareness stage and become customers by guiding them through their health journey.
John Hancock interacts with its customers 20 to 30 times a month, Hanson said, via touchpoints like ads and app notifications. To ensure those messages break through, the company emphasizes what it found matters to its audience — namely, prevention and early detection of diseases.
Investing in Video
John Hancock aims to have every new product, solution or marketing message align with the “longer, healthier, better” lifestyle messaging at the center of its brand strategy, Hanson said.
And, as it rolls out new wellness services for customers, the brand prioritizes promoting those benefits in its TV and online video advertising.
For instance, in 2023, John Hancock started providing access to the GRAIL Galleri multi-cancer early detection test for members who subscribe to its Vitality PLUS paid premium program, which offers additional benefits not included in the free Vitality GO version. Since the GRAIL Galleri partnership launched, more than 30 of John Hancock’s customers have shared with the brand how the test detected various cancers early enough for treatment, Hanson said, and the brand has highlighted some of those stories in its marketing.
These stories have “tremendous impact on our customers’ lives, and it’s been good for our business as well,” Hanson said. Because of its success with video-based promotion, John Hancock has continued to develop its in-house video capabilities for producing testimonials and educational resources, she said.
The “Leaders in Longevity” docuseries serves a similar brand-building function. The videos have garnered millions of impressions across multiple platforms, and ads derived from the series have achieved a 100% video completion rate on some channels, according to John Hancock.
Influencers and Live Events
The docuseries also aligns with several of John Hancock’s other marketing initiatives beyond its video push, including recent forays into live events and influencer marketing.
Each episode in the series features an influential expert in scientific research, nutrition or medicine. For example, scientist and author Dr. Andrew Steele highlighted recent developments in altering the biological aging process. And physician, author and TED Talker Dr. BJ Miller shared how his experience as a triple amputee influenced his work in palliative care.
Some of these experts have made appearances at John Hancock’s Longer. Healthier. Better. Longevity Symposium, an event the company started hosting in 2023. In fact, the inspiration for the video docuseries came from John Hancock exploring ways to share the insights from its Longevity Symposium with a wider audience, Hanson said.
Plus, the experts featured at the symposium and in the docuseries have found the video assets produced by John Hancock valuable when it comes to promoting their own work, she said. In that sense, the brand is helping these experts to raise their social profile and establish themselves as influencers in their fields, which has an add-on effect of promoting their work with John Hancock.
The company is also exploring activations with financial influencers on social media, Hanson said. And the combination of high-quality video assets and influencer outreach is helping the insurance brand court younger generations who might not fit the expected audience profile for life insurance.
All of these marketing initiatives tie back to the brand’s goal of creating “a virtuous cycle” for promoting health and wellness, Hanson said.
“Besides your friends and family, your life insurer is who should care most about you living a longer, healthier, better life,” she said. “It’s good for the customer, good for our business and good for society.”
Featured image credit: John Hancock
