The Marketing Agency Talk

Most people will buy life insurance, hospital and surgical insurance, car insurance and even home insurance for their house. However, would you pay for “obscure” insurance like pet insurance, content and building insurance or even courier insurance with Fedex or DHL? Would you even buy a work-related insurance to protect your company, your work mates and yourself?

We just put a deposit of $17,000 via a broker to import in 18,000 unit of Chinese New Year celebration goodies. In my previous post, I had mentioned we were still busy putting finishing touch on our Christmas campaigns for our lunch, and will only start on Chinese New Year campaigns in mid December. Well, our client had a great idea and it required us to make from scratch a really unique product that has a distinct Chinese favor. For the past 4 days, we talked to lots of local and overseas agents and combed through many websites and finally, we found the factory that meet our requirements. The production lead-time and shipment schedule are so tight that we decided to buy insurance in case we are penalized for late delivery due to no fault (at least, not directly) of ours. My counter-part in another agency just shrugged his shoulders and said we worried too much. He reckoned that the Chinese factory would want to collect the balance payment so they would race against the deadline for us. Honestly, I’m not that optimistic. What if something happened and there’s no show of goods? There are just so many “what if” that made me felt more secured buying an insurance. I rather take the “better safe than sorry” stance. Buying insurance where appropriate is part of corporate risk management. This is etched in my mind especially with our experience in January.

A client asked us to rush a job for his exhibition in Mexico. To meet his exhibition, we couriered a 25kg box to Mexico. The goods arrived 4 days later with slight damage. The meager $10 insurance fees we paid helped defray part of the cost. The client was happy as that certainly helped minimize his loss. Small money had prevented big headache. In fact, all doctors would tell you that prevention is better than cure.

As a marketer, or a decision maker, in your company, have you looked into insurance to protect your work and minimize losses? As an individual, have you also looked into insurance coverage before it is too late?

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