While in India a couple of weeks ago I noticed a billboard which advertised discounted health insurance for diabetics. It’s an interesting development in an industry which is not widely seen as being innovative.

By offering health insurance for specific illnesses, the company no doubt adjusts it’s premiums and cover. However it’s a clever approach and targets the niche other companies would penalise.

I’ve not seen this type of offering before, and I’m wondering if health insurers in other parts of the world also target specific illnesses?

Here’s the link.

The overuse of the word ‘innovation’ is still annoying me. So much so that I’m going to start the thread – “This is NOT innovation.”

Contestant one – step right up.

I’m happy to be informed why the ‘i’ word has been added to this product (if you cannot see it, it’s just above the large Garnier brandname on a white background).

For a while now I have been toying with the idea of starting coverage of advertisements which use the word “innovation” in them, and running a critique. As you might anticipate, this was going to fall under the category of “This is not innovation.”

Why do this?

It’s linked to the innovation backlash that BusinessWeek has covered. Maybe it’s because I’m sensitive to it, but I feel that the word ‘innovation’ has crept into ad agencies default vocab. I can picture a couple of uber-creatives in black polo necks staring at some copy about 2am in preparation for an early morning pitch. The conversation goes like this :

Uber #1 : “It doesn’t really….errr…do it for me.”
Uber #2 : “Yeees. It doesn’t grab me either.”
Uber #1 : “Haaaang on!”
Uber #2 : “What???”
Uber #1 : “We haven’t used the word ‘innovation’ in there anywhere”
Uber #2 : “Damn. You’re soooo good.”

But I digress. “This is not innovation” is on hold because over at Endless Innovation Dominic has looked at three “innovation” ads in a recent copy of Fortune. He looks at how the ads project the innovation story. Take a look…

While in transit at Singapore’s Changi airport I noticed what looked like a private art exhibition hosted by the Singaporean bank DBS. Being partial to modern art, I dropped in only to find it was not a gallery, but a private lounge for invited customers of DBS. While it has a full range of very personal banking services, it also had a relaxation lounge complete with massage chairs, an orchid garden, iMacs and iPods for use while in the facility and a private meeting room.

Oh, and let’s not forget the artwork.

After a quick tour it was apparent that the facilites were well above the Singapore Air Business Class lounge. And for the mere sum of SIN$5000/year membership they should be.

The other way to become a member is by invitation from the bank – i.e. to have a lot of business with DBS.

It’s an interesting way of reaching out to your most valuable customers in a way that would be valued. High net worth individuals tend to fly a lot, and when you are at an airport inevitably there’s some unavoidable waiting time. By providing this facility DBS has the potential to further cement the relationship with a very profitable customer group.

There’s a very dry press release here. I’d have liked to post some photos but they weren’t very keen on the idea of me taking pictures.

After recently making a frequent flyer booking with Air New Zealand it occurred to me how much thinking the company had put into its processes to make it user friendly. I also belong to a couple of other frequent flyer programme, but rarely use these airlines now as the system they use for redeeming points is purposely murky.

So how has Air New Zealand developed innovation around a fairly standard set of automated processes?

1. You do not get points for your flights, you get Airpoints ‘dollars.’ You can easily find out how many dollars you get for each flight.
2. The balance of your frequent flyer account is in these Airpoints dollars.
3. You can redeem these dollars for seats on any flight at any time. There are no obscure rules about the number of seats allocated to frequent flyers, the classes of seats or when you can fly. It’s very simple – if there is a seat available on the flight you can book it with your Airpoints dollars.
4. When you book online you can choose to pay with ‘real’ dollars, or your Airpoints dollars.

When you think about it the innovation seems quite minor. However it makes for a great user experience, and its very easy to understand.

A friend in the airline industry tells me that airlines prefer to have frequent flyers using their points in a downturn, but when business is booming – like right now – they’d rather have fee paying customers. Because of this any system that helps people make use of their points is generally shunned by airlines, and that also means that other airlines will probably not adopt similar systems.

In the meantime however I’ll be making as many international flights as possible on Air New Zealand.

If the phrase “perfectly informed customer” is new to you, or you are wondering how the web has been critical to this development, then look no further than Farecast for a classic example. It’s a new company that predicts whether airfares are about to go up or down, but at the moment only works in the USA.

There’s more here…

(Thanks to Boing Boing).