UI marketing students help The Principal better market insurance lines
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Written by: Tom Snee
Winners of the Voice of the Young Consumer University Partnership Competition
A team of UI marketing students recently won a marketing contest sponsored by The Principal in Des Moines, receiving $2,500 for the Cedar Valley Habitat for Humanity. The winning team included, from left, Tim O'Conner, faculty advisor, and students Haley Madsen, Ben Zschack, Abigail Cappozzo, Abbie Crouse, and Kelsie Kithcart.

A team from the University of Iowa captured the top spot in a contest sponsored by The Principal Financial Group that helps one of the nation’s largest insurance companies better market its life insurance plans to a new generation.

The contest, The Voice of the Young Consumer University Partnership, is an annual, semester long project by The Principal in which students address a real business marketing challenge the company faces. The competition drew 25 teams from UI, Iowa State University, the University of Northern Iowa, and Drake University, and four were selected to make presentations to company executives. This year’s challenge was to develop a marketing plan that would help the company better market life insurance to Millennials.

The teams from the four schools gave their presentations at The Principal’s Des Moines headquarters Dec. 4. The UI’s winning proposal suggested the company reframe life insurance with the theme, “Live for today, invest for tomorrow.”

The proposal would focus on promoting the investment benefits policy holders would get while alive, instead of the benefits their family receives after they’ve died. The team’s research suggested that Millennials don't think about death because they are still young and consider themselves indestructible, and therefore the message needs to concentrate on a message they will pay attention to.

The group also suggested The Principal make its website more visually inviting and user friendly, and use social media more strategically.

The team members from UI, all of whom are marketing majors in the Tippie College of Business, included: Kelsey Kithcart of Atkins, Iowa; Haley Madsen of Cedar Rapids; Abbie Crouse of Fort Dodge; Benjamin Zschack of Wheaton, Illinois; and Abigail Cappozzo of Glen Ellyn, Illinois. The team’s faculty advisor was Tim O’Conner, adjunct professor of marketing in the Tippie College.

The team received a $2,500 community impact prize that the students donated to Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity and a traveling trophy that will be displayed in the Marketing Department in the Pappajohn Business Building.