McDONALD: Paul has a question.
TINNIRELLO: Thanks, Brian. This question’s for Jaimie and for you, Brian, as well as for John. I just want to wrap this up with this thought. Is the Web – each of you made a great presentation for specific areas for carriers to improve their presence, but overall, are we saying collectively that the Web and all of the new functionality, the presence, is now a mandate for carriers if they want to survive the new age of doing business electronically? Is it a mandate? Jaimie let me start with you. Is this a mandate that you’re talking about to carriers? Being on the Web is either there or you’re not.
JAIMIE: I believe the answer to that is yes, Paul. Just looking at the number of consumers who are going online to visit and learn more about a specific product or carrier are huge – it’s in the millions and it’s growing, so I think it’s definitely critical that a carrier have Web presence and an effective Web presence in order to capitalize on that.
TINNIRELLO: John, substance over functionality was the question I asked. POGAS: I would say that the biggest impediment to growing my e-commerce business here at Aon is the reluctance of carriers to conduct business online and to offer online products. So, absolutely, it is a mandate.
TINNIRELLO: And Brian.
OCHELTREE: Well to me, I don’t have the depth of the insurance background relative to whether it’s a mandate or note, but I can tell you that if it progresses the way normal online automation adoption does, those that do not will become conspicuous in their absence. It’s like back in the early ’99/2000 where we were trying to convince companies that they should have a Website. You know, that was a tough argument for a while. And then it got to the point where it was not only standard but you were conspicuous in your absence. So, I would think it’s certainly going to go in that direction. The consumers are going to push that, they’re going to force that. Those that choose not to for whatever reason are just going to have to justify that loss in percentage of consumer conversion.
TINNIRELLO: Gentlemen, thank you very much. I think you’ve done a great job. Lee, do we have an outside question that we’d like to ask?
McDONALD: We’ve had a few questions from some of our audience. Some of them I’ve answered privately already, but I was to share with everyone – we will have a replay of this up within three to seven days, depending on how we do on the transcript. We have video. We will have the presentations integrated with the video as well.
Susan from ComScore also points out some stats that both reinforce and update some of the stuff with Jaimie. Jaimie, they’re seeing numbers that are changing as well. I’m sure we’ll be speaking with her on various things in the future. Susan and some other people pointed out – they referred to Esurance in some of their questions and comments as being a company that seems to have gotten a nice jump on social networking and viral marketing. Any thoughts on how Esurance is pulling that off?
PICKLES: I don’t have any specific observations on that although I do know that they, along with Progressive, are fairly ‘progressive’ if you will, in their overall Websites and are on the leading edge with respect to many of the new developing technologies that allow those types of activities to take place.
McDONALD: That was a two-part comment because Mike Wise, who will be joining us next week as a fellow judge, talked about their social networking and marketing and Susan who I referred to from ComScore, Susan Engleson, points out that they didn’t really get as big an online presence until their integrated it with television advertising, so really it plays across the spectrum.
TINNIRELLO: Lee, this is an evolving issue and gentlemen, thank you again for excellent presentations. Each of you hit key areas that I think are important to the audience, the carriers that have the potential for growing their business. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of this. This time next year we’ll have yet another chapter to add to the E-commerce marketplace, and again, Jaimie, John, Brian, thank you so much for joining us today.