Discovery on building a marketing- and brand-centric culture in business

In the rapidly evolving world of marketing, new technology and shifting consumer behaviour present significant opportunities for businesses to position and build their brands.

Discovery, which was recently named SA's Marketing Organisation of the Year at the 2024 Marketing Achievement Awards, actively cultivates a brand- and marketing-centric culture to enable and accelerate the brand’s growth.

Says Firoze Bhorat, Discovery's chief marketing officer: “The Discovery brand has always been a purpose-led brand, with our core purpose driving how we do business and therefore, defining our brand.”

The story of the Discovery brand is compelling. When Adrian Gore and Barry Swartzberg, two of the founders of the business, started the company in the early nineties, they set out with a single vision: to build a different type of business that would change the world for the better. From there, the core purpose of making people healthier and enhancing and protecting lives developed.

“We’ve always been known as the brand that shakes up the market by pioneering some of the most innovative products in our industries. It’s this innovation that enables us to deliver significant value to our clients,” says Bhorat.

The brand has never lost its insurgent mindset, and Discovery is today known for various innovations that have redefined financial and insurance categories.

Discovery’s business model, which is built on creating shared value for the business, clients and society, is central to the brand’s unique value proposition.

“At Discovery, we think differently about client needs and what drives risk and behaviour, and how we can improve risk outcomes for our clients and our business,” says Bhorat.

“We use our carefully crafted shared-value approach to deliver value through unique products and rewards, and we leverage the latest technology to design brilliant client experiences. It’s this combination of purpose, brilliant client experiences, an insurgent mindset and the shared-value insurance model that differentiates our brand.”

On the role of marketing in Discovery, Bhorat is emphatic in his view that marketing acts as a key driver of the brand, business strategy and performance. To support the continuous innovation in products and services, the marketing team invests in building the brand through distinctive brand assets and brilliant customer experiences.

Some of the most recent product innovations include:

• A new home loan offering with Discovery Bank;
• Discovery Miles, an exciting and valuable rewards currency;
• Miles D Day where clients can double their rewards with Discovery Miles;
• Vitality Travel, the biggest travel platform in SA with discounts and rewards for flights, accommodation and car hire; and
• Various sponsorship properties with Vitality, such as Vitality Padel and the Vitality Run Series.

The Vitality Padel benefit gives clients an upfront discount on court bookings in a network of more than 100 courts that include all Net Set Padel, Africa Padel and 10 by 20 Padel Club courts, plus a range of independent courts. This benefit has seen record take-up since its launch to market earlier in March.

“Our product innovations allow us to offer compelling propositions to our clients that enable future growth, while analytics capabilities enable measurement and adjustments where needed,” says Bhorat.

In today’s marketing landscape, no brand can compete without understanding and investing in the most optimal marketing technology solution.

On this front, Discovery has a well-developed and mature digital marketing strategy that aims to deliver new business growth while retaining and engaging existing clients through all marketing channels. This strategy is unique in the market and ensures continual optimisation of spend, channel performance and reaching the next level of digital maturity. The results ensure growth in new business and clients that add value to and derive value from Discovery.

“Partnerships too are important for our brand,” says Bhorat. “Over the years, we’ve developed strong working partnerships with the big technology platforms such as Google and Meta. Generative AI is, of course, the next tech frontier and one that marketers are now learning about rapidly. It’s an exciting area in realising efficiency, supporting creativity and, most importantly, future innovation in both product development and marketing.” 

This article was sponsored by Discovery.