Mutual of Omaha’s chief marketing officer Keith Clark understands the power of building connections.
In 1963, Mutual of Omaha launched Wild Kingdom – a television show dedicated to exploring wildlife – so that insurance agents would have something to connect with customers about on house calls. The idea was when sales people knocked on the door, they would have something engaging to discuss before their dry pitch for a financial services product.
“In a time of encyclopedias and no internet, it was a viewfinder into the world of wildlife, like no one had seen before,” says Clark. “It really opened the aperture to wildlife conservation and how we study wildlife. At the same time, it gave the thousands of salespeople around the country an icebreaker.”
The brand leaned heavily on a connection between protecting wildlife and protecting one’s family with insurance. Producing the show gave the company great brand recognition, so that their name was top of mind when customers needed financial services. The company has recently revived the Wild Kingdom show in hopes that consumers will continue to make these associations between protection and Mutual of Omaha with the tagline “From the Wild Kingdom to Your Kingdom” and come to the company when they need life insurance, mortgages, annuities or Medicare supplements.
“Wild Kingdom fueled Mutual of Omaha from a strong regional brand to a very strong nationwide brand in the sixties, seventies and eighties,” reflects Clark. “We did a ton of research to understand the magic formula of how this worked and if there was still value in this brand asset. As we tested and learned, we found there’s a ton of value because it’s authentic and because it fits so well with our mission of protection.”
Since relaunching the show last year, the program has been nominated for four daytime Emmy nominations. Brand Innovators caught up with Clark from his office in Omaha, Nebraska to discuss the reboot of the show and how the brand is bringing its iconic IP to connect with consumers in a digital world. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me about the Wild Kingdom revival.
We relaunched it in October 2023. We partnered with Hearst Media Group. We’re on NBC at 9:30am on Saturday mornings in the education block, a half hour show. We have one of our original hosts, Peter Gros, who last hosted Wild Kingdom in the eighties, and a new host, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, who brings a nice injection of energy. In our first three months, we got four Emmy nominations.
We’re looking at different ways to revive a nostalgic audience that grew up with a Wild Kingdom. We’re doing that with over-the-air television programming supported with social and podcasts. We are using that purpose of protection to really highlight the move down the funnel and down the age spectrum so that we can start engaging a younger audience about financial services sooner by talking about protecting the environment and wildlife and getting them to know our brand in a way that’s not tied to financial services.
The financial services funnel is pretty narrow, whereas the people interested in wildlife and curious about how to protect the world we live in are much broader. We’re hoping to build relationships around all the great work we’re highlighting with our Wild Kingdom programming to then pull them into our ecosystem. Then when it’s time for them to make a financial services decision, we are there.
We’ve got lots of different activities planned to engage even younger audiences, but what’s old is new again. In 1963, this is what Mutual Omaha did with Wild Kingdom to begin with. They activated this whole ecosystem unknowingly and we’re still harvesting the benefit of all those young people that grew up watching Wild Kingdom. We’re trying to rebuild the Wild Kingdom effect, modernized for today’s channels and audiences.
Can you talk about your digital transformation?
We were seeing some erosion in our awareness consideration numbers as over-the-air TV started getting so disintermediated by streaming sites. We saw the effectiveness start to drop. We’re not spending MetLife or Liberty Mutual money so we really need to choose our spaces a little more carefully because of our budget, we’re a mutual company. We’re really trying to spend policy holder money really efficiently and effectively.
We were doing two flights of TV and it just wasn’t broad enough to carry us for the whole year and to really get our message across, so we built a whole digital infrastructure and retargeting flow so that we could get more bites of the apple, talk to people as they’re engaged and nurture them to the system. It also allowed us to become much more accountable to the results. With TV we would look at ratings and brand awareness every quarter or so, but with digital, we’ve built some in-house metrics that really help us narrow in on our efficiency and effectiveness and establish benchmarks and just understand how we’re doing throughout the year.
What is your approach to innovation?
I would classify us as fast followers. We are constantly looking at trends and where things are going, but we also know that our audience probably isn’t on the leading edge. We could be out there innovating in different media types, but our audience is probably not there. We are trying to be just in front of where our audience is. Right now we’re building content to meet our audience. They’re delayed adopters. We look at innovative ways to integrate our messages across distribution channels, across our media buys. The classic sense of innovation, more in the lines of effectiveness and efficiency in our best in class way.
Can you talk about your audience and how you are reaching them?
Our basic brand platform is Mutual of Omaha protect your kingdom. We do that primarily through digital – digital video banners and content to raise our brand awareness. We are primarily a 50+ targeted company. We narrow in on our key audiences and talk to them digitally. Before I was here, it was more of a big broad brand builder using TV, but we’ve twisted that model and really tried to be more focused on digital and more targeted so we can eliminate a lot of waste that would come along with TV. Connected video works very well for us. The promise of digital TV is finally here and we can target the right people and see good results. Our open enrollment time for Medicare runs mid-October until early December and we are running our campaign – Protect your Kingdom on Medicare – to support that.
What is your approach to sports marketing?
We have eight golfers that we sponsor – five PGA, two LPGA and one senior golfer. There’s a bit of brand awareness there because we have our name on the hat and on the shirt. It’s a little bit of name recognition, but really the most value is giving an opportunity for our salespeople to interface with their customers and give them “money can’t buy” experiences. We do golf clinics with the ability to play with pro golfers and host dinners. If you’ve got a client or business partner that’s really into golf, it’s a pretty easy way to get a meeting and do some networking and relationship building. We see a lot of value with that. We get three or four appearances per golfer. The nice thing about golf is you can activate around the country.
How has your career path has helped shape you for your current role?
I was an ad agency guy for about 17 years headquartered in Detroit. I’m from Michigan originally. Back in 2009, the recession was looming and we had just won a new account, USAA based out of San Antonio. Part of the deal was then we needed to open an office down there and my boss and I went to San Antonio and opened an office and serviced USAA account. That was my first experience with financial services. It was a great learning ground because USAA has a little bit of everything. I worked on auto insurance, banking, investments, life insurance, and just really learned the power of financial services and what it can do to help release people’s worries and set them up for success in future life.
When I got an opportunity to come to Mutual of Omaha, it was a culmination of thinking of the places where I really enjoyed what I was doing and that was with folks that are more altruistic in nature. Being a mutual company, Mutual of Omaha is not trying to hit that quarterly return for Wall Street. Our goal is to be here in the next 10 years, 20 years, next 100 years because we’re making these lifelong promises to our customers.
I’m a child of life insurance. My dad died when I was in high school. I was able to go to college and get my first house because of the life insurance that he purchased. I saw the power of it firsthand and having the ability now I get to help other people realize the importance of life insurance in the portfolio. You just never know what’s going to happen. It’s just about how you leave things when you go. Mutual of Omaha’s altruistic mission of protection really spoke to me.
