Gerber Life: “About Us” Evaluation by Corporate History.net

Gerber Life Insurance Company specializes in juvenile life insurance (term life, accident, college plans, etc.). Formed in 1967 as a subsidiary of Gerber Products (which has been owned by Nestle since 2007), Gerber Life today has nearly 3 million policies in force with a total value of $33 billion. Its headquarters is in White Plains, New York. The main About Us page is here. (For those following @CorpHist Twitter feed, the Gerber Baby is a girl who grew up to be a novelist: read all about her here. We believe she's the best rep for Gerber Life's corporate history, per below.)

OVERALL GRADE: C

Products/Services: C

The main About Us page (Meet Gerber Life Insurance Company) states the company’s purpose in its first line: “Since 1967, Gerber Life Insurance Company has provided quality life insurance, especially for young families on a limited budget.” It goes on to elaborate, and includes an image of a family plus a few statistics about the amount and geographical areas covered. All this is good, but the page could be much improved by adding links within the text to pages such as Products and Customer Service.

Another issue: there are two awards at the foot of Meet Gerber Life Insurance Company, with icons (bravo!) —but the awards date from 2009 and 2012. Are these the latest awards that can be mustered, or is this a case of not keeping the site updated, per our Commandment 10 of About Us pages (“Remember to keep holy the updates”)?

Personality: B

The personality of Gerber Life shines through most in the page that’s misleadingly labeled About the Gerber Baby. It turns out to be corporate history told with charming personal anecdotes about the founding of Gerber Baby Food, soon followed by the search for the perfect baby face to use in advertising. This page ought to be mentioned and linked to on the main About Us page: it’s a great introduction to Gerber. Its final paragraph, “Another way to help baby,” sketches the establishment of Gerber Life.

If this page hadn’t been so misleadingly labeled or had been linked to within the text of the main About Us page, we would have given Gerber Life an “A” for personality.

Accessibility: D

The Contact pages on this site are confusing. The link in the header takes us to a page with phone, email, and mailing addresses (U.S. and Canada). It has a link to a standard online form for submitting email. The Contact page’s sidebar has a link to Customer Service, which repeats much of the information and links back to the Contact Us page, with the promise that we’ll find “A directory of customer service phone numbers and payment addresses.” We don’t. These pages should be combined and simplified. Our Commandment 8 of About Us pages is, “Remember to make yourself and your organization easily accessible.” Insurance companies have a reputation for being difficult to deal with; special care should be taken not to confirm that impression.

TAKEAWAY

Look through your whole site for great material, and make sure it’s easy to find, either by repeating it on the main About Us page or by adding links to it.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). To talk about your About Us page, contact us!

Today’s example was chosen at random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.

Happy 100th, A. J. Hastings!

Anyone remember small-town stationery stores? Amherst, Mass., has one that's alive, well, and celebrating 100 years. I shop at A. J. Hastings every time I visit Amherst, a home away from home, and my recent trip happily coincided with Hastings' centennial. The store is actually older, but the Hastings family bought it in 1914 and has run it since then--it's a third-generation family business.

The store's celebration included home-baked chocolate cake, display cases with artifacts, streamers across the windows, and a guest book to sign -- proof that it doesn't take much money to commemorate an important business anniversary. 

A. J. Hastings (which is not to be confused with our dear old client A. W. Hastings in Enfield, CT) sells merchandise for UMass, Amherst College and other five-towns institutions, art supplies, fun things for kids, and greeting cards in addition to office supplies. You have to love a store that has a section of sympathy cards for the loss of pets. 

Also, the map section is superb. I found a New York City subway map here that I couldn't find in Manhattan because we have no independent bookstores with maps anymore. A friend in Amherst told me that just before leaving for a trip to Russia, he found a map of Russia in stock, right in his hometown store ... and it was in Russian, which is what he wanted.

The Pioneer Valley has a Staples, sure, but Hastings is the real thing. It aptly calls itself "a small store with big ideals." That's good company storytelling.

Believe it or not, Amherst still has a typewriter store as well...but that's a story for another day. 

Horizon Lines: “About Us” Evaluation by Corporate History.net

In 1956, Malcolm McLean launched the first containerized shipping service, revolutionizing the ocean cargo industry. His Sea-Land Service was acquired by CSX Corporation in 1986, and went public in 2005 under the name Horizon Lines. Horizon, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, accounts for a third of all U.S. container shipments to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, which in accordance with the Jones Act must be made on U.S.-built, owned, and flagged vessels operated by predominantly U.S.-citizen crews. Horizon Lines owns 13 such container ships and approximately 31,000 cargo containers. The main About Us page is here.

OVERALL GRADE: A

Products/Services: A

The main About Us page, Our Mission, History, and Values, is extremely well done. After a summary of the company’s function, it moves on (under “History”) to describe its founder’s role in developing containerized shipping and the company’s expansion. As lovers of language (including puns), we can’t help but smile at the final section, on the company’s values: “Seven C’s.” Pictures of the founder and of several huge container ships liven up the page. Headings and short paragraphs break up the text, which is nicely written and to the point.

Personality: A plus

The Who We Are page has tabs for Customer Service, Sales, and Operations. Each tab focuses on a different employee, telling what the employee does, why he or she is passionate about his or her job, and how he or she interacts with the public. As we write this, the profiles are of the Service Delivery manager in San Juan, the Senior Account Manager for the Central Region, and the Export Cargo Services Supervisor in Oakland. We can barely imagine what such jobs involve, yet we were fascinated to read about the employees who hold them.

We have never seen employee profiles written this well—profiles that so effectively convey personality in a very job-oriented way. Our Commandment 3 of About Us pages is, “Reveal they personality.” Horizon Lines does that exceptionally well.

Accessibility: A

Horizon Lines has a Contact page with the standard online form, phone, and mailing address. But it also provides a long list of actual names for the people in charge of specific terminals, with their mailing address, telephone, and email. It makes us feel that all those diligent, enthusiastic people at Horizon Lines would indeed love to hear from us. Well done again!

TAKEAWAY

Great corporate history, great images, great employee profiles and easy accessibility make for a great set of About Us pages.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). To talk about your About Us page, contact us!

Today’s example was chosen at random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.

Antwerp's Pop-Up Bank

Mainstream banking is like mainstream theater in a way -- the demographic is getting older. How to appeal to younger customers? PNB Paribas takes a novel approach with its Hello bank! subsidiary, self-described as "the first 100% digital mobile bank in Europe." Business history is full of interesting firsts. I visited the pop-up in Antwerp, Belgium, on the city's busiest shopping promenade. The signage grabbed me from across the street. No tellers. No platforms. Instead: Co-working space, 3D printing, cheap coffee, smartphone repair, free e-newspapers, and free wi-fi. Interesting that the digital strategy includes physical spaces--after all, we still live in the physical world.

CorporateHistory.net president
Marian Calabro in the
Renault Twizy at Antwerp's
Hello bank!

Founded in 2013, Hello bank! claims to have 177,000 clients. Putting PNB Paribas's other woes aside, this seems like an effective way to extend a banking brand. Oh, and this particular branch had a Renault Twizy, a one-seat car. You couldn't drive it away, but you could sit in it, as I did.