Loadsure’s new brand reflects its market-leading position

Loadsure entered the scene in 2018 as a plucky, disruptive upstart. Though not yet fully crystallized, the brains behind the business had lofty ideas about digitalizing cargo insurance and addressing broad risk exposure in the underserved freight community. Bold. Innovative. Service-minded. Our brand was a reflection of who and what we were at the time.

We’ve grown.

Our company, products, expertise, and culture have all evolved and we have a clear vision. Now an established, credible authority in the insurance space, we needed a new brand that accurately reflected the Loadsure we are today.

That day has arrived.

What is a brand, exactly?

When people outside of marketing hear “brand,” it’s quite common for them to think of a company’s visual elements—its logo or some graphic design assets they’ve seen. Their minds quickly go to the McDonald’s golden arches, the Nike swoosh, or the elaborate, script lettering of Coca-Cola.

But a design is more than a logo, color palette, or website; done well, a brand is the embodiment and articulation of everything a company is and offers to the world. It’s about the company culture and the experience—right down to the confident handshake of the person you meet and the soap in the bathroom. (Yes, it’s also the logic that inspired those simple, yet very elegant articulations of the brand.)

A brand can powerfully affect the experience of a product or service.

Coca-Cola’s response to The Pepsi Challenge reveals key insight

If you were around in the 1970’s and 80’s, you no doubt remember “The Pepsi Challenge.”

Looking to expand its cola market share, Pepsi invited people to try a “blind vs blind” sample of Coke and Pepsi and reveal the drink they preferred. People overwhelmingly chose Pepsi. The ads filled the airwaves.

Despite a strong, well-established brand, Coca-Cola’s market lead was under threat. In response to the campaign, the company tweaked its soda formulation so as to compete with Pepsi. With a comparable product and a more powerful brand, they (quite logically) believed consumers would vote with their feet.

They didn’t. The release was an abject failure and Coca-Cola retreated to its classic formula shortly thereafter.

In fact, because Coca-Cola corrupted the integrity of its brand—interfering with the product’s heritage and breaking the bond that consumers felt with it, the corporation lost even more consumers.

Here’s where it gets interesting.

In 2004, Read Montague at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas repeated the experiment with the aid of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which can identify activity in different parts of the brain. The results were fascinating. Researchers could see the ventral putamen (reward center) of their brains light up when the majority of participants consumed Pepsi—validating the original Pepsi Challenge. When they repeated the test, but informed subjects which beverage they were sampling, however, their medial prefrontal cortex (responsible for higher thinking and recollection) flooded with activity, too. This time, people chose Coke—the memory centers of their brains, influenced by a deep connection to the Coca-Cola brand, were overriding their reward centers. 

Why do I share this story?

Brand recognition is a powerful factor in our experience of products and services—and why it’s so important to get a brand right, and to protect it.

How do you create a resonant brand?

Building a brand is a fascinating exercise—and it all begins with a massive (and probably underappreciated) discovery phase. It’s about digging deep to understand what the company is and what it offers—beyond the products and the services (though these are fundamental components). It’s about uncovering the company’s DNA. If our brand was a person, who would it be? What newspaper would it read? What shoes would it wear? How would it speak?

Then, the branding exercise becomes a process of distilling that insight down into something tangible. How will we articulate the brand’s personality and core attributes? How will we express them visually? When written? Online? How will it be codified so that everyone who interacts with the brand gets a consistent experience at every touchpoint?

It’s rewarding work, and I’m proud of where we’ve arrived for Loadsure.

Loadsure: This is who we are

We are authoritative leaders, experts talking to experts—yet, in the same breath, we recognize that we’re challenging long-held assumptions in the insurance space. So, while we hold deep respect for the culture that birthed our industry, we’re also pioneering a new future. We’re shaking things up—and making a real difference for brokers and the freight community. 

While we may be rebels with a cause, we haven’t lost sight of the fact that we must remain approachable and deeply human. From the beginning, Loadsure innovated not for innovation’s sake, but to create meaningful change for people. At its core, Loadure’s DNA has always been human-centric.

When you connect with our new Loadsure brand, we hope that it resonates with you—and stays with you.

• Insurance brokers—we hope it’s clear that Loadure is here to augment your capabilities, empowering you to better support the underserved freight community
• Freight community—we want you to trust that Loadsure can help you better manage risk; freeing you to focus on building your business
• Future employees—we hope our tech-first approach and open, welcoming culture shine through; that you see everyone is valued, ideas are welcomed, and that everyone has a voice in the company

In short, we hope this new brand helps you all see the value Loadsure brings to the marketplace, because, together, we can create a meaningful impact for businesses and the people who rely on them.