Nationwide gets it

I saw a TV commercial last night for Nationwide Insurance. They were promoting their new iPhone application to help make your claims process easier in the event of an accident. What's that? They spent valuable marketing monies to build an application that makes their customer's lives easier? That's right. The understood that people need them most usually when they're driving (Which means what? When people are MOBILE.) So they spent time and money making a product that is truly USEFUL to their customers...one that makes their lives easier. Their iPhone app includes:

• An accident toolkit
• Start a Nationwide auto claim
• Fina an agent
• Find a repair shop
• Accident history
• And brilliantly - a "flashlight" tool.

Nice. And to be even smarter about it, they're using traditional mainstream media (ie: TV, etc) to let people know they're the first and only (so far) insurance company offering such a helpful tool and they're using the message to push their users online to interact with this tool (which, gives them trackable measurability).

You can bet most every other insurance company will be jumping on board with this, but there's always the feather in the hat of being first.