The Story
Texicare was created with the single purpose of providing health care coverage to small businesses in Texas.
Texas Mutual, a three-decades-old workers’ compensation insurance provider serving more than 80,000 businesses and 1.5 million working Texans and their families, created Texicare in 2023 as the logical next step in their commitment to build a stronger, safer and healthier Texas.
Texicare tailors its services to provide affordable and accessible health care for Texas businesses and their employees. The company meets business owners and employee members where they are—as a neighbor instead of another large incumbent.
In the spirit of this personal connection with Texas businesses, Texicare was introduced through a highly purposeful and competitively priced launch in 2024 that targeted historically underserved markets one region at a time.
In place of a single, state-wide announcement, Texicare orchestrated smaller, more targeted individual launches in West Texas, Houston and El Paso through localized media outreach that integrated earned and paid strategies.
Prior to its launch, Texicare sought a PR partner that could provide a focused go-to-market strategy to drive aided and unaided awareness while building goodwill throughout Texas.
Challenge
Texicare had three communications goals across its target markets:
- Establish and enhance the brand’s reputation
- Build trust with small business owners, brokers and community stakeholders
- Drive top-of-funnel awareness
When Texicare’s name is mentioned, they want Texans to say, “Yeah, I’ve heard of them.” Better yet, when a small business owner is evaluating new health care plans for their employees, they should think of Texicare first. Texicare is also sold exclusively through brokers who represent multiple health insurance options. This meant the campaign needed to tell a story compelling enough that small business owners would specifically request Texicare quotes by name. Such conditions required a launch campaign tailored specifically to local media, providing air cover for new sales.
As a company in a highly volatile industry with a history of negative public perception, Texicare also needed a crisis PR plan and response strategy that empowers executives to navigate potential issues with authenticity and authority while protecting its newly established brand.
Solution
The Red Fan team immediately dived in with a three-stage launch process, starting with a crisis discovery exercise with Texicare’s leaders. Red Fan held individual stakeholder interviews with the company’s C-suite to identify the business risks and scenarios that keep them awake at night. The conversations were held in confidence to allow leaders to speak freely and vulnerably—a valuable element of the process to ensure no stone is left unturned during crisis planning.
The insights gleaned from those sessions formed the foundation of a crisis workbook, which serves as a living document for ongoing crisis response planning. The final document was presented during a war room-style crisis workshop where executives reviewed and practiced responses to several mock crisis scenarios.
Following the exercise, the executive team reported increased confidence in each other and the process. Now, when and if something happens, Texicare officials know who to call, who’s responsible for certain issues, how to work through a situational analysis, and how to craft a response.
Red Fan then created a community engagement strategy to foster relationships with local organizations and business leaders. The team identified select, widely recognized organizations or events in health care, community health or local/small businesses. The groups were evaluated based on the breadth of their community relationships and local social impact.
Next, Red Fan developed and executed a data-driven media relations program to launch Texicare in West Texas, Houston and El Paso, targeting local print, radio and TV outlets. To inform the outreach strategy, Red Fan conducted a market-by-market media landscape to uncover which outlets best serve small business owners and the reporters who could become long-term partners to Texicare.
Red Fan also partnered closely with Texicare’s paid media agency to leverage strategic media buys to enhance the company’s earned footprint and vice versa. Together, the agencies have secured dozens of print, online, radio and TV hits for Texicare.
In advance of Texicare’s initial launch in West Texas, Red Fan also piloted a media training workshop with Texicare CEO Meredith Duncan. The training consisted of best practices, example interviews (good, bad and ugly), and mock interviews with Texicare’s target reporters. Red Fan leveraged its messaging triangle tool to guide messaging priorities and bridging techniques, enabling Duncan to nimbly move from one talking point to the other while emphasizing Texicare’s top value propositions.
