Aon and Manchester United: The Aon United philosophy

Aon’s partnership with Manchester United works on multiple levels and offers considerable benefits for both parties.

Since the two joined forces in 2010, “Aon United” has been a term used often by the company to emphasise both its partnership with the club and the unity within its own business. This is considered to be particularly crucial in an organisation that has expanded so rapidly through acquisition, as Aon president and chief executive Greg Case explains.

“We were looking for something big enough and powerful enough to help us connect as a global firm,” he says.

“We had a thesis, an idea, about Aon United – if we could serve our local clients with global capability and global capability delivered locally, we thought that was powerful for our clients. And we were looking for a vehicle that would help us reinforce this.

“Manchester United would have been nice if Aon United didn’t really work well, but if Aon United starts to work Manchester United is an incredible magnifying tool for that and that really has been the focal point. Four years have gone by very quickly for us – we just started to take off and set the stage for the next piece of this and we want it to be a meaningful step with Richard [Arnold] and Ed [Woodward, chief executive] and the team so we are quite excited. We do lots of different things around the world, but this really is the focal point platform for us.”

To those at Aon, “Aon United” is both a philosophy and a mission statement. “When Aon first started to look out into the world for an opportunity, what we were looking for was brand awareness across the globe,” says Aon’s global chief marketing and communications officer, Phil Clement. “We are a young firm – although there are parts of the company that go back 325 years – and our brand strategy was to increase our brand presence across the globe.

“We looked at a lot of different platforms and ideas and from a marketing perspective. In building a global brand, the idea of having one programme that can be used in one way consistently across the globe became very attractive.

“We went into the partnership with three primary measurements: the notion was ‘Aon United’, which was the idea of our business plan evolving around bringing the firm together and getting these acquisitions to work together. Quite honestly we have made so much progress over the past five years, that it is hard to believe this was once one of our primary objectives back then.

“Branding was also a big piece of it, and then direct client conversations, all of which have resulted in advancing revenue.

“These were our three goals, each measured in three different ways.

“What we found also was that in picking the Manchester United partnership we were able to do one programme that resonated across the globe. This brought us focus, meaning that – whenever and wherever we went out we could talk about the club. We held a Global Service Day when we launched the partnership we gave Manchester United jerseys to every employee. We were able to talk about the value of the club and we were able to have the same conversation in Africa that we were having in Asia.

“Two years later we did an event called ‘Follow the Football’. We started one football at the southern tip of Australia, one at the southern tip of Africa, and another at the southern tip of South America – and our employees carried the balls across several continents eventually to get to London and at each place we got to talk to clients, colleagues and communities about our common values and our shared values.

“As these things came up we could see that Aon people would interact with people at Manchester United – in addition to the client work we were doing – and those within our firm and at Manchester United just started to talk about our business. There has been a lot of connectivity.

“When we started to look at phase two of the sponsorship we were a little less concerned with brand promotion and more concerned about that connectivity and ways of both amplifying and driving that. So we have been very happy partners.”

Clement adds: “Our colleagues around the world love to see their colleagues elsewhere in the world doing things with Manchester United to help build communities – it helps draw a lot of attention to it. What is wonderful is to see the exact same things happening in Cape Town as might be happening in India, as might be happening in Japan or all over the US. We know there is a really strong correlation between brand and engagement and pride, which is extraordinarily important.

“It also gets into the heartbeat of our company – at the core we are about empowering human and economic possibility – we are working at developing people’s talents, giving them access to healthcare, a secure retirement – and fundamentally we feel like our company has a mission much like that of the Foundation, which is to help people at risk and to help them be everything they can.”