Why my practice gives out branded teddy bears

We have Mr. Insurance teddy bears. They’re used for clients with children. When clients are pregnant, we will give them the teddy bears, but also we use them for our clients if they’re recovering from an illness or there’s a celebration or a birthday. They’re a bit of a gimmick and just a nice little touch we can use in all sorts of opportunities.

We started sending out gifts to our clients who had babies, and we get children’s insurance in Australia. So we wanted to start connecting as soon as the child was born. We’re sort of participating in that new child’s journey, obviously caring for the parents. We’ve put insurance in place for the parent to look after the child if something should happen to the parent. Instead of just sending out a gift that wasn’t recognized with our brand on it, we get these really nice teddies made with our logo on them. We started using them for children who were born, and then from there we went, “I’ve got to go see a client who’s up in the hospital because they’re sick; take a teddy bear.” Then sometimes we’ll say, “So and so is having a birthday, so we’ll give them a teddy bear.”

We’ve got clients who are going overseas, and we’ll send them a teddy bear to say, “We know you’re leaving the family for a couple of months to work over in the U.K. or wherever.” And then we’ve had photos back of what that teddy bear gets up to. I’ve never seen a teddy bear drink that much. Some of those teddy bears have been sitting in first class or business class or in a bar in Japan. We’ve seen one that unfortunately didn’t survive because the new dog got it. We had to resend teddy bears.

But for us it’s getting some of the photos back. What we found is the clients receive them, they put them up on Facebook and say, “Look what we got, and the kids love it” or “This is a pretty funny thing.” We’ve been delivering teddy bears for about five years. It’s something just a little bit different that seems to connect well with people and can be used at nice times and even in difficult times when clients are recovering.

Hear more in the July episode of the MDRT Podcast: