There’s a word in German insurance that used to mean something.
Vertrauen.
Trust.
Forty years ago, it was powerful. It named something real. You pay premiums for decades and hope the company shows up when everything goes wrong. That’s a genuine leap of faith. Calling it Vertrauen acknowledged the leap.
Then everyone started using it.
Allianz. R+V. The regional players. The direct insurers. The new insurtechs.
Every company that wanted to say something meaningful reached for the same word.
And here is what happens when everyone uses the same word to mean everything:
It starts to mean nothing.
Words don’t die on their own.
They get hollowed out.
Here’s how it happens. A company says Vertrauen in an ad. Then a customer files a claim. The process takes three months. Extra forms. A partial payout. A letter full of words a normal person can’t understand.
Small gap. Noted.
Then it happens again. To someone else. And someone else. And someone else.
Now the word doesn’t signal trust anymore. It signals the gap between what was promised and what was delivered.
Every new company that uses Vertrauen today doesn’t just inherit the word. They inherit decades of disappointed expectations behind it.
They haven’t betrayed anyone. But the word has.
The real problem isn’t the word.
It’s the marketing strategy behind it.
There are two ways to build trust.
Promise-first marketing says: believe us.
Proof-first marketing says: watch what happens when it matters.
For decades, German insurance marketing has mostly run on promise-first. Every campaign says some version of the same thing: we are stable, we are warm, we are here for you, we are vertrauenswürdig.
And then a customer files a claim. And finds out what the company is actually made of.
That gap — between the promise and the proof moment — is where trust dies. Every time.
The word was trying to say something real.
Vertrauen was always a stand-in for something more specific:
When the worst happens, we will treat you like a partner. We will explain what’s going on. We will not make you feel stupid. We will pay what we owe without making you fight for it.
None of that requires a word.
It requires a demonstration.
Show the claim call. Show the first conversation. Show what the letter looks like — written in German a person can actually read. Show what happens in the first 24 hours.
That’s not a brand promise. That’s proof.
And proof does something a promise can no longer do in this market.
One company figured this out — in a different industry.
Zappos didn’t build their reputation by selling better shoes.
They built it by making the uncomfortable part of buying online — returns, service, mistakes, friction — feel safe before the customer ever needed it. They showed what happened when things went wrong. They put that moment at the center of their brand.
The result was trust that no competitor could copy with a price cut.
Because it wasn’t built on a word. It was built on a visible, repeatable experience.
In German insurance, this is still the white space.
No major insurer has put the claim moment at the center of their brand. They keep putting the promise there instead.
The first one to change that will own something no one else has.
The opportunity is sitting there. Unclaimed.
Vertrauen isn’t beyond saving.
But saving it means doing something this industry still avoids:
Stop advertising the promise.
Start showing the moment.
The claim call.
The first letter.
The first 24 hours.
The explanation in German people can actually understand.
The decision when the customer is stressed, confused, and afraid.
That is where trust is either created or destroyed.
Not in the slogan.
In the friction.
The first insurer that earns trust in public — at the exact moment customers expect disappointment — will own something no competitor can copy with another slogan.
What’s the most overused word in your industry’s marketing?
The one that used to mean something and now just fills space?
Drop it in the comments. I’m collecting them.
I suspect insurance is not alone.