AAMI’s New App. Waste of Money?

When I mention AAMI car insurance, the first thing you’d probably think of is Rhonda and Ketut. They’re the stars of a popular AAMI ad campaign that has been running for over a year now. Now whether or not Rhonda and Ketut have overshadowed AAMI brand or complemented it isn’t something that I’ll be examining. I want to assess whether the current AAMI ad promoting the Claim Assist app. Was this ad a good idea, or a wasted opportunity to strengthen the brand? Open the window, let the breeze in and let’s find out.

Now in the car insurance industry, pretty much all insurers offer the same product (sorry, I’ve worked in the industry). So there’s very little differentiation. Therefore, car insurance companies really only compete on awareness and price.

With the release of this new app, it seems that AAMI is trying to create a differentiator that will help give them something to shout about rather than price. Personally, I think that this is a mistake (although not the biggest mistake) for a few reasons. Although, I don’t have the market shares statistics I’m guessing that AAMI car insurance is probably the number car insurance company in Australia. Therefore, to defend this title, it should constantly be talking about how it provides the best quality cover at the cheapest price… because that’s what people care about.

This new commercial deviates from this strategy and instead starts talking about an app which I don’t think really offers much value besides contributing to the epic Rhonda & Ketut love story. And the app doesn’t even work well in the first place. So it’s puzzling why AAMI are investing millions of dollars to talk about an app rather than use the duo to continually reinforce that AAMI provides the best quality car insurance at a cheap price.

Anyways, here’s the AAMI app commercial:

AAMI Claim Assist App

Apart from being promoted on this television commercial, the app is also promoted on the homepage of the AAMI website. If you listen again to the commercial, AAMI tell you to download the app. But is this really realistic? Let’s just say you’re an AAMI customer and you’re going along having a nice Sunday drive. Then suddenly the next thing some crazy cardigan smashes into you. What’s the first thing you’re going to do?

It certainly won’t be visiting the app store to download the AAMI app. Instead, you’re going to get out of your car, have a conversation with the driver, exchange details, take some photos  and go on your merry way. Assuming all parties are civil.

Now, AAMI may argue “but you’ll download the app before you have an accident” but c’mon, that’s rubbish. People don’t expect to have a car accident. If they don’t expect an accident, they aren’t going to download the app. It doesn’t make sense.

What’s more, if you actually visit the AAMI claim assist download page, you’ll see that there are only 6 people have gone there and left reviews (at the time of publishing). The app gets 3 out of 5 stars. So, the damn app isn’t even getting any glowing reviews – which must be disappointing considering its being heavily promoted by AAMI.

Going further into the reviews, the app is getting quite a few lackluster responses saying that it’s either ho-hum or that there are other apps out there that actually do a better job. This is not a good sign for AAMI.

So, in summary, AAMI has chosen to invest, dare I say, millions of dollars promoting an app that no one’s downloading. Yes, the Rhonda and Ketut are minor celebrities – but this is a wasted creative that does not strengthen the core message. The smarter thing to do was to continue the Rhonda & Ketut story and invest those millions in positioning AAMI as a good quality car insurer at an affordable price. It’ll be interesting to see how long commercial lasts for.

Growing your small business,

David Moloney
Small Business Planned