Sunday, January 25, 2009

Towers Perrin: an old business sticking its toe into the new web

In my job search for an actuary job I've ended up looking at the websites of many insurance and HR corporations. The vast majority of them are modern and clean as I'm sure most of these companies have realized that their website is their main channel of external communication.

Amongst all of these sites I think it is worth looking at Towers Perrin as an outlier of what these companies are doing in using new web communication tools. Beyond a modern website they have a podcast (which I wish they would post more to), use twitter, and blog with some regularity.

It's not all that interesting when media companies use these tools -- it's starting to be surprising when a media company doesn't use these tools. But this is pretty far ahead of the curve when it comes to a non-media company. I would be interested to find out where the interest is coming from to reach out to the web like this. Is this someone high and central at Towers who is pushing this? Or am I just seeing a lot of action from a small group with in Towers which has been given the permission to try this as an experiment. And of course I would love to know what sort of rewards they are reaping from communicating in this space.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Steven. First, I want to say thank you very much for your comments about towersperrin.com. I'm thrilled to hear that you've found the site valuable, and we are trying to provide content in many new ways in our space. I can provide some insight into how this is getting accomplished:
- We have a small web team within marketing that includes a talented designer and webmaster, who stay current with web marketing and web communication trends. Beyond the core team, we have several exceptional writers who have adapted their style for the web, as well as a seasoned technical staff behind the scenes.
- Our senior leadership, both within marketing and in the broader organization, are open to experimenting in the web world and have allowed me and my staff a lot of room to try new things. Most of them work, some of them don't -- but we're given the chance to be creative. It's one of the main reasons I've been with the company for 12 years!

All the best with your job search, and thanks again.
Melinda Snow Welsh
Director of Internet Marketing
Towers Perrin