PMA

What do you do when you want your brand to make a bold, clear statement but your company speaks with different voices? We helped PMA Companies unify its autonomous business units into a singular brand to stand out in the marketplace.

OVERVIEW

PMA Companies offers risk management solutions for workers’ compensation and property and casualty insurance. Over the years, the company acquired new firms to provide additional risk management services and broader business expertise to its customers. Under the PMA umbrella, each company maintained a distinct brand identity—from different logos to how employees of each unit delivered on customer experience.

As a result, PMA Companies engaged the marketplace as five separate resources rather than one integrated company. In the face of an evolving marketplace and competitors increasingly communicating integrated risk management services, it became critical for PMA to speak to the industry and the marketplace as one distinct brand.

HOW WE PARTNERED TOGETHER

Working closely with PMA, Bailey initiated a comprehensive methodology to assess the perception of the company across its internal and external audiences. From that analysis, we built a brand alignment strategy for PMA made up of three key components:

Establish a cohesive brand identity. We designed a brand system that aligned all five business units with a consistent look and feel. The brand hierarchy made it clear that each business unit’s identity and expertise is an extension of the corporate brand. This helped customers see how each business unit’s abilities are integrated and aligned with the values of the parent brand.

Make the brand system universal. We helped PMA extend the new brand system to every touch point encountered by its customers and stakeholders—from internal communications to trade events to the web to sales materials—to ensure that every engagement is not just a business unit experience, but a PMA experience.

Create a unifying message. Bailey helped to craft the takeaway experience and brand promise that every PMA customer, prospect or stakeholder should experience from engagement with any part of the PMA business team: “We are passionate employees who embrace our service-driven culture, taking pride in delivering tangible value to our clients.”

As brand perception is also the result of how a business delivers on its word, Bailey helped develop messaging and support to help internal teams understand and truly live the unified brand promise.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

Through its collaboration with Bailey, PMA was able to project a strong, unified image that stood out against the competition and effectively communicated its full value to customers. It also made it an attractive acquisition to Old Republic Insurance Group. During the acquisition, the new PMA brand system made the integration with the Old Republic brand an easier process, and Bailey has been working closely with Old Republic and PMA leadership teams on fully integrating the brands.