When Marketing Becomes the Fall Guy: Why Metrics That Shine in Good Times Fail in Crisis

In Vietnam’s life insurance landscape, Marketing and Brand often take the back seat - and shoulder the blame - when sales come up short. Budgets for campaigns are among the first to be cut because ROI is hard to link directly to premium production. Then, when distribution falters, marketing is criticized for not being loud enough, not providing the right tools to close sales. Sound familiar?

1. Metrics in Silos, Strategy in Isolation

In my last decade leading Customer & Marketing in top-tier insurers, we meticulously tracked Brand Health, Usage & Attitude, Social Sentiment, Buzz Volume, and NPS among many others. In good times, these metrics add polish to management reports. In bad times, they become afterthoughts - luxury dashboards that can’t explain why production crashed.

This disconnect speaks to a deeper issue: Vietnam’s life insurance model remains distribution-led, with vital business functions - Product, Actuarial, Underwriting, Claims, Legal, Customer Experience, Technology - all operating in silos.

Marketing becomes a standalone department: a cost center when times are tight, a scapegoat when results wane.

2. The Customer Lens: Brand is More Than Awareness

A cohesive customer journey - from Search to Purchase, Onboarding, Service, and Claim - needs the Marketing function integrated throughout.

• Search: Branding builds awareness - think Top of Mind and Social conversations.
• Onboarding: Messaging simplifies policy complexity, sets expectations.
• Service: Brand touches are trust-building amid day-to-day interactions.
• Claims: Transparency and ease reinforce brand credibility.

Yet, most insurers measure these brand touchpoints in silos - not as levers for business action.

3. Vietnam Data Speaks: Service Builds Loyalty

In a study involving 500 life insurance customers across Vietnam, five key factors were found to drive satisfaction: reliability, assurance, responsiveness, competence, and empathy. Each directly impacts loyalty and, by extension, business outcomes.

This tells us that brand isn’t just about visibility - it’s about service quality and trust across every interaction.

4. The Real, Integrated Role of Marketing

So how should Marketing shift from nice to have to absolutely critical? By building metrics and actions into the core network:

• Embed brand metrics into early warning systems: Onboarding NPS, time-to-first-claim satisfaction, policy comprehension scores.
• Activate agents as brand ambassadors, not just quota carriers: Equip them with shareable stories and customer experiences that differentiate.
• Use AI and MarTech to personalize customer journeys - trigger the right message at the right stage to reinforce brand meaning, not just message volume.

The Provocative Challenge for Leadership

Next time Marketing is cast as the scapegoat - or the first to go - ask yourselves:

• Which brand metrics helped us save the back-book during downturns?
• Are we measuring awareness to reassure management - or integration to drive performance?
• Is Marketing embedded in underwriting, onboarding, service, and claims - not just campaigns?
• If an existing policyholder becomes a brand advocate, is that part of the tracking - not just a nice story?

Final Thought

In Vietnam’s agent-heavy life insurance model, Marketing can no longer be a cost center or a backup plan. It must become an anchor for resilience - integrated, measurable, and connected to real customer outcomes. That’s when metrics stop being silos and start being signals that guide the business.