20 years of challenger brand lessons with Auto & General CMO, Jonathan Kerr

**Jon Evans** (0:00)
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. Now, in this episode, I'm meeting who Mark Ritson describes as the best CMO in Australia. And Mark doesn't give praise easily. So what's this CMO done? Well, he has spent 20 years disrupting the insurance category in Australia, taking a brand from nothing to 14% market share. How did he do it? Well, in this episode, I find out from Jonathan exactly how he did it. And what does it take for a challenger brand to cut through a duopoly in a market? There are so many great lessons for anyone out there that's trying to do amazing work on limited budgets. Here we go.
Jonathan, welcome to the show. Good to see you.

**Jonathan Kerr** (1:22)
And welcome to Australia.

**Jon Evans** (1:23)
Yeah, it's good to be here, man. It's a slightly different climate to what I'm used to. Yes. But enjoying it. And here, courtesy of Commercial Radio & Audio. So a big shout out to them. And we're both doing stuff on the stage this week, which will be a lot of fun. But anyway, we're here to talk about you and your career.
So bring us to what you're doing now, because you've been on an amazing journey. For anyone who doesn't know, just talk us through the brand here. And I'm particularly interested to know where you come from and where you come to now, because it's quite a remarkable story, this one.

**Jonathan Kerr** (1:55)
Yeah, so I was incredibly lucky to land in Brisbane. And I kind of thought first, I'd be like, well, I've worked with all the online bank divisions around the world. I wonder if I can get a job running an online bank or doing something like that. But there wasn't much interest in me for that. And so I was a little bit of a loss. And then I found out about this business, Auto & General, and did a bit of research, which wasn't as easy as it is now.
And I realized the significant business that I have in the United Kingdom, you guys will know us now as Compare the Market, and in South Africa with Teller Shore and a bunch of brands over there and Hippo. And I realized that this is a significant business, but was very small and on an interesting growth trajectory, but still very small.
But I couldn't believe that they were only on the phone. So they're a great direct mail business in the directories and really beginning to build the beginnings of what became Budget Direct. And I thought, geez, the timing was incredible because I kind of walked in, met the team and just said, well, you weren't really advertising, but I'm here. And I think the next phase is to take you online.
And they were like, yeah, we were just about to do that anyway. Let's see if we can make this work. So we invented a position called General Manager of E-commerce. And with incredible support, I got on with it.

**Jon Evans** (3:31)
I love that. So did you pitch your own role then? The role didn't exist before?

**Jonathan Kerr** (3:35)
No.
I got an introduction to meet the CEO and then the chairman. And, you know, it was just literally... The conversation was much more, I can see who you are. I can see what the opportunity is. Have you got anybody to take you on that journey yet? And I can obviously explain what I've done. And I think it was quite a serendipitous, you know, that I was there at that moment. And I was very fortunate. The CEO at the time was from the United States. And I think that my CV from the US, if it had fallen into the hands maybe of an Australian leader, I think they wouldn't have recognized how big the University of Nebraska was, all of the work that I'd done in marketing, licensing and sales there. And realized that, hey, from a young age, I'd been involved in some quite interesting stuff. And so I think that sparked some interest. And then it was my job to close the gap between opportunity and job. And I guess I managed to do it on the day. But then that started this great journey where immediately it was like, okay, well, no one's offering online quote, no one's offering online sale for car and home insurance. We only did car insurance back then.