ADVOCARD is faced with the same problems as the rest of the insurance industry: a media landscape that has been hostile ever since the financial crisis, the reluctance of German consumers to concern themselves with insurance in general, and products that are intangible and impossible to tell apart. Furthermore, ADVOCARD has no sales structure of its own that can be “pushed” to increase sales of policies. ADVOCARD acts purely as a product provider for independent sales organisations and must therefore generate interest amongst consumers and make as great an impact as possible at the pre-sales stage – ideally by addressing end customers directly. So we combined data-driven journalism and the German media’s fondness for regional comparisons. We analysed more than 1,000,000 lawsuits reported by ADVOCARD customers in terms of cause, duration, amount involved, breakdown by gender and age group and – most importantly – distribution across Germany, right down to district level. The result: “Germany’s Biggest Litigation Atlas”.

In order to ensure widespread media coverage in Germany and effectively reach the target group, it was imperative to position “Germany’s Biggest Litigation Atlas” in regional media – something that is no longer possible without a direct connection to the region in question. Even results collected at state level are hardly ever covered in regional newspapers. For this reason, information on litigation intensity for Germany as a whole was broken down to district level – and even down to individual areas in Hamburg and Berlin.

The result is impressive: 3.1 billion online visits. 110 million generated contacts. Justice ministries, universities and the German Institute for Economic Research requested the data behind the litigation atlas. The atlas didn’t just inspire a societal debate but also established itself as an adroit sales tool for marketing Advocard. Within a remarkably short period of time, the litigation atlas became the most successful PR promotion in Advocard’s company history.