Chromatic: Guru, Concierge, Champion or Code Breaker? Using your brand to build preference.

How can you stand out in an ever-more crowded MGA market to achieve growth? Being agile, empowered, and AI-enabled are now table stakes, so how do you make it easy for people to choose you over your competitors? 

To build brand preference, you must stand for something compelling – and stand out from competitors. So should you emphasise customisation or streamlining? Assurance or innovation?

Our report provides an overview of potential options.

Why brand matters
In any marketplace, customer consideration and choice is largely based upon brand reputation. People choose to work with businesses that they perceive as superior – because, for example, they are reputed to offer better service, more expertise, greater reliability, or sharper value. Brand strategy, therefore, is about making a simple choice: it just means ‘deciding what you want to be famous for in your audience’s minds’.

“Brand reputation supports growth: Edelman reports that 75% of business decision-makers are more likely to buy from a company they know by name, even if they have not engaged with it directly”

What do we stand for?
Successful businesses make an active decision to stand for, and stand behind, a proposition which appeals to customers and sets them apart from competitors. This provides the basis for consideration and choice. The proposition (promise) might relate to the nature of the offer, the manner of engagement, the vision of the business, or the benefits and impact of the service. Or a combination! But whatever choice you make, the promise must address customers’ needs, be authentic, and be distinctive.

What makes MGAs special?
Until recently, it was relatively easy for MGAs to identify and communicate a compelling brand proposition. As nimble organisations, unburdened by the bureaucracy that bedevils large established carriers, MGAs could promise to be new kids on the block – more technologically-savvy, more focused, and more efficient.

But things are changing. There are now more than 1000 MGAs in the UK and USA. As a consequence, MGAs need to work harder and think more creatively about how they stand out from each other, not only from more established carriers.

And whilst it remains vital to ensure the service offer is sound and scalable, the more nuanced aspects of customer experience (informed by delivery style and business personality) are becoming important differentiators. These subtle differences inform customer decisions, just as consumers become loyal to particular car brands despite them having almost identical components and performance.

Brand strategy options
From our analysis of current MGA brands, we can see businesses making a choice between focusing upon the benefits of customisation or the advantages of streamlining – i.e. promoting a White Glove service or a Friction-Free process. And at the same time, they are deciding whether to emphasise the assurance and dependability of their engagements, or upon their innovative and disruptive approach. By cross-referencing these axes, we determined four broad ‘positioning’ options – the jumping-off points for crafting a more specific brand proposition.

Code-Breakers (e.g., Lemonade): These brands are defined by disruptive simplicity. They explicitly reject industry conventions, inviting customers to “forget everything you know about insurance” in favour of a radically new and transparent model.

Innovation Concierges (e.g., Berkley): These brands act as curated guides to the new. They focus on “fostering a culture of innovation, collaborating with clients to discover and implement novel solutions beyond the status quo”.

Efficiency Champions (e.g., Next Insurance): These brands promise streamlined dependability. They emphasise “simple, affordable, and automated processes that provide reliable coverage with minimal effort from the customer.

Personal Gurus (e.g., Plymouth Rock): These brands offer customised assurance. They position themselves as “expert partners who provide tailored solutions and hands-on guidance to drive client success”.

How to stand out: Language and Visual Identity
Crafting an authentic positioning defines your story, but it is your visual identity and tone of voice that bring it to life. These elements are critical for differentiation. Research from McKinsey & Company shows that a distinctive identity allows brands to stand out from competitors with similar propositions and is a key factor in achieving superior growth and profitability.

Every choice – from words and typography to colour and imagery – must be harnessed and harmonised to build a coherent brand experience. This consistency shapes your reputation, determining whether you project the solid conservatism of a large underwriter or the disruptive appeal of a tech innovator.

These elements are critical for differentiation. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, a leading marketing science research centre, provides evidence that distinctive brand assets—such as logos, colours, and tone of voice—are fundamental to building ‘mental availability,’ ensuring your brand is considered easily by customers in a crowded market.

So it is no surprise that successful brands invest significant resources into getting their language and visual identities right. Because, whether we are conscious of it or not, language and design choices send important signals, using a code which we are all trained to translate.

Where to stand up: content and channels
When you’ve decided what to stand for and how to stand our, the ongoing decision is where to stand up. What conversations do you want to join or lead? Where should you engage with your priority stakeholders? How can you make every ‘touch point’ – whether an email or an event – a positive and memorable experience?

This requires a deliberate balance of investment across paid (advertising), earned (PR), and owned (your digital estate) media. A successful engagement strategy demands simultaneous focus on overarching impact and meticulous application of the details.

Building and executing a successful brand marketing and stakeholder engagement campaign is a major undertaking. Because you have to look at both the big picture (overall impact) and the small details.

Small details. Big difference.
Little things can matter. Some years ago, we were lucky enough to have a large consumer brand as a client. We helped them define their proposition (stand for), refine their visual identity (stand out) and develop a stakeholder engagement plan (stand up). We knew that the client valued us and retained our services because of the sharpness of our insights, the creativity of our brand designs, and the notable impact on their market presence.

But because they were a ‘green coloured brand’, we also made sure that in every meeting we provided green apples, green biscuits and green tea for refreshments. And the client told us that this attention to detail helped us to win the contract. So it’s the small details – how you engage with people – that can make a big difference – how you stand out in a crowded marketplace.

The lesson for MGAs
Growth, talent attraction, and loyalty start with a deliberate brand strategy. First, decide which of the four broad positioning options best suits your business offer. Then get into the details – because that’s what will transform you from a generic service into a brand that makes human connections and builds enduring value.

If you would like to find out more, please contact:
Simon Case
Simon.case@chromaticbrands.com