Warranty Direct – Reliability Index

PR remains the cornerstone of Performance Communications’ skill sets, as well as one of the main reasons clients stay with us long-term. Warranty Direct was one of our first ever clients and, during the 15 years we spent with the business until 2016, it became the UK’s largest direct provider of automotive and household warranties.

A major reason for the brand’s success was the PR-based comms platform that Performance Communications gave it, which allowed WD to punch well above its weight when it came to media coverage.

As well as a steady baseline of PR news stories, the wealth of proprietary data held by Warranty Direct sparked bigger campaign ideas that really elevated the business into a position of authority in the automotive warranty sector.

The first was the creation of the Warranty Direct Reliability Index, which used the firm’s substantial database of 60,000 live policies to chart the reliability performance of the majority of the used cars (using an age range of 3-10 years old and under 100,000 in mileage as checks and balances in the interests of robustness) on the UK’s roads.

This became an annual study of vehicle reliability that generated a yearly significant spike in media coverage, as well as enough direct traffic to the Warranty Direct website to cause it to crash on more than one occasion.

In 2008, we also proposed and executed the creation of the Warranty Direct-owned microsite, Potholes.co.uk. Using the firm’s data on the frequency and repair cost of car damage caused by potholes each year, the project generated another noteworthy annual spike in media activity, thanks to our yearly report on the cars most likely to sustain pothole damage and the cost to repair each one by make and model.

Both campaigns became steadfast annual favourites with the mainstream media with many national transport and motoring correspondents featuring both reports on their regular calendars of ‘must-have’ news features.

In addition, the knowledge that Warranty Direct held robust automotive data – as proven by the two campaigns over the years – meant that the client became a regular source for the media of reliable vehicle breakdown and repair information, further elevating Warranty Direct’s media value and PR authority.