EP 31 - Distribution Lessons from Netflix, Hollywood, and Insurance
When I first compared the movie industry with the insurance sector, I did not expect the analogy to spark so many conversations. Yet the more dialogue I had, the more it became clear that distribution is one of the most revealing mirrors for understanding how industries evolve and how organizations define themselves.
In this Episode:
Francois Jacquemin explores how Netflix and Hollywood studios offer a useful lens for understanding insurance distribution, strategic alignment, and value chain control in a shifting European market.
At the surface, Netflix and the traditional Hollywood studios occupy the same world. They create stories, produce content, and compete for the attention of millions. But as soon as we look at how they distribute their work, the comparison becomes more instructive.
Netflix controls the entire relationship with the audience. It produces content, acquires content, markets it, and brings it directly into the home. It acts as a producer and a distributor at the same time. It speaks directly to the viewer.
The studios take another path. They produce films, but they depend on a vast network of partners to reach the audience. Local cinemas, global cinema chains, television channels, streaming partners. In this world, the touchpoint with the client is not owned by the studio. It is influenced, negotiated, and shared.
This difference shapes their culture, their economics, and their strategy. One lives in a direct model. The other in an indirect model.
Insurance is strikingly similar.
Across Europe, large insurers use multiple channels to reach clients. Some invest heavily in direct digital relationships. Some rely on brokers, MGAs, and agents. And many attempt to do both. But just like in film, the underlying strategic question is not about channels. It is about choice. What type of company do you want to be?
If you choose direct distribution, you accept the responsibility of controlling every moment of the client relationship. You invest in digital journeys, marketing, data, and continuous adaptation. You own the trust, and you earn it every day.
If you choose an intermediary-driven model, you focus on product strength, operational clarity, and your ability to support partners who speak for you. Your client is the client of the distribution channel. Your influence on the touchpoint is indirect but still critical.
Both approaches can work. Both can fail. The determinant is alignment.
What we have seen in the European market is a rapid consolidation of intermediaries. Large brokerage groups now control client portfolios that were once fragmented across hundreds of smaller players. Their knowledge of clients and their ability to steer product choice are powerful. For insurers, this requires a more deliberate negotiation of the value chain. When a broker controls the relationship, you are not merely offering a product. You are integrating into someone else’s distribution logic.
Digital channels add their own complexity. We often debate whether online sales should use the same operational value chain as traditional channels. In practice, the speed and flexibility required online often force earlier differentiation. But advances in automation and AI are slowly changing this. Some insurers now manage to maintain a unified backbone. Others continue to separate. There is no universal model. There is only the operational truth of each organization.
The movie analogy also highlights an important difference. In film, success is immediate. A release either resonates or it does not. The market speaks within days. In insurance, the verdict takes longer. A product can be adjusted, repositioned, or rebuilt. A slow start is not a death sentence. But this makes discipline even more important. When you do not receive immediate feedback, alignment becomes your compass.
At the heart of all this is value chain control. Netflix, the studios, and insurers all define which activities they own and which they outsource. They decide how to balance flexibility with consistency. And they embed these decisions into the daily functioning of their organizations.
Distribution is therefore not a simple operational choice. It is a statement of identity. It is a reflection of how you see your client, your partners, and your own role in the ecosystem. And as the insurance sector continues to navigate consolidation, digital acceleration, and regulatory pressure, the clarity of that choice will matter even more.
In the end, whether we operate in film or insurance, we face the same questions. Who do we serve? How do we reach them? And what do we need to own in order to deliver on our promise?
These are not technical questions. They are strategic ones. And they define the future of any business built on trust.
Timecode:
00:00 Introduction and Topic Overview
00:45 Netflix vs. Studio Distribution Models
03:05 Insurance Industry Distribution Channels
05:11 Strategic Choices in Distribution
07:35 Value Chain Control and Flexibility
10:08 Comparing Timeframes: Movies vs. Insurance
11:51 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
François Links:
Apple Podcast
Transcript:
So I'd like to come back on a topic today because I've received some comments and also had some very interesting discussions on this topic before. And this topic is basically distribution through Netflix or the studio or insurance. It comes from this podcast I did with Neil, comparing the movie industry and the insurance industry—similarities and differences. And we found out that a lot of points in the whole value chain of, or the business of, one industry and the other industry are pretty similar.
Today is about more the distribution. Let's start with the distribution, how Netflix and the studio are distributing the product. And here, maybe I should have invited Neil again for this podcast, but I'm going to take a bit of risk and take what I've learned from the discussion with Neil and just start with that.
Netflix is a distribution company. They produce movies, but they don't only produce movies and series. They also buy or run series, and they control the whole distribution process, the marketing process, and they have full control of the relationship with the end client at home.
The studio is very different. The studio, they produce the movies and the series, but usually they don't control the touchpoint with the client. They outsource part of the distribution and sales process to a lot of different actors, really. But it could be small, local movie theaters that have a specific public, and they're looking for a special or a specific type of movies. It could be a television channel or franchises. It could also be larger distribution theaters that have blockbusters and very big theaters in large cities, and also a large number of those.
The way Netflix and the studio approach the distribution is totally different. One, they have to convince the end client to register and to use and go on using their services, while the studio, they need to convince the distribution companies, big or small, to sell their product to their clients. The convincing is different. The approach to the business is different. One is B2C, the other one is B2B, and it impacts, of course, the way each of those companies approaches distribution. That's very clear.
If you compare that to the insurance, there are also those types of distribution differences, different distribution channels that are being used. Some of the distribution channels allow the insurance company to have direct access to the client. So it is B2C. And some other distribution channels, they control the relationship with the client. So the insurer needs to distribute through and convince the independent insurance intermediary to sell the insurance contract to the client.
Very large insurance groups, whether they are in a big country or small country, they tend to have multi-channel distribution. We could say there is the online one, there is the agency one, there is salary distribution. There is also independent brokers. There could be small brokers and very large insurance brokers.
And we see that in Europe, at least for the moment, there is a consolidation of the industry. So more and more brokers are being aggregated by larger acquisition firms that control, therefore, the portfolio of business and product they can sell to their client.
So from the point of view of the insurance company or the movie industry, as I mentioned, and movie companies that I mentioned earlier, there is a similarity in the way you need to look at how you are going to distribute your product and make a choice of how you are going to distribute your product. The focus is whether on the relationship with the client or on the ability to produce a very competitive catalog of products to convince independent distribution to sell to your client.
In any case, it is a choice that needs to be made in a strategic way, and at a strategic level. And the whole value chain needs to be aligned with that goal and how this product is going to be distributed. I remember a long time ago, big insurance groups, the largest in Europe, were thinking: "Are we an insurance company, and are we selling to the client, or are we simply an insurance company that are going to produce product that will be sold to the client via different distribution means, different distribution channels? Or are we distribution companies that are going to outsource part of the product definition, product development, product setup, and then control the distribution channel?"
What we can see, like in the movie industry, and in the insurance distribution and insurance industry, is a large number of various strategies, competing strategies. As I said earlier, the insurance companies, usually large ones, have multi-channel distribution, which requires them to have different value chains. Even if part of the elements of the value chain can be copied or used for various distribution, it's not always the case.
The online value chain, what I could see, and what's working based on what I could see and what also I could develop myself, there was always the duality of whether we want to have one single value chain, and at the end the marketing and the sale is different, or if the value chain needs to be much earlier differentiated for the online channel versus the agency or the brokerage and distribution channel.
The flexibility required and the need for a quick resolution of the change in the value chain for the online distribution usually requires that the value chain is different for the online channels and the other channels. But with the need for flexibility and the ability of insurers to be much more flexible, thanks to A.I. and the optimization that it brings, the flexibility is much more present in the value chain. And therefore, there can be now some online channels that use the standard value chain of the insurer, but it's not always the case. So that again depends very much not on the strategy that you want to apply, but that one depends very much on the operational capability that the insurer has today and the one that the insurer is going to develop in the future.
In any case, once we look at the insurance company and Netflix or the studio, they all have a very strong control of their value chain. They have a very clear definition of what they outsource to other distributors or other producers for movies or product developers. We speak about reinsurers here, or sometimes also some insurers will outsource part of the product development to the very distribution channel that they will use for distributing their product.
Because those distribution channels have access to a large number of clients, they have a very clear knowledge and definition of what they want to sell to those clients, how the product that they want to sell to those clients need to appear, and the ethic or the aggressivity that those products need to have, whether it's for a market penetration, a price aggressivity, or a large number of features. So they have that view, and insurers negotiate sometimes also with those distribution channels to adapt their own internal value chain to be able to promote those products. So it's about interaction, but at the end of the day, this interaction will be embedded as crystallized in the value chain. And the control of the value chain is very important for the movies and insurance industry.
A difference there is the fact that in the insurance industry, there is a lot of time which is spent on developing a product and launching a product on the market. In the movie industry, this time spent to develop a project is much longer, but the moment of truth in the movie industry is much shorter. There's gonna be a lot of marketing, a lot of promotion, ads, etcetera, etcetera, whether it's country or global level or regional level. If the public likes the movie, then it will be a snowball effect towards something very valuable and successful for the movies.
But for the insurance contract, the hit is not at the moment of the launch. Of course, there is a moment of truth when the first contract is sold to the client, and you start seeing the numbers, and there's this success in sales. Or when you present that to your distribution partners, and they like it very much, they will give positive feedback, and therefore you can expect good numbers in the future. But the failure at the beginning may not mean a failure in the long term because the product will be able to be adapted and slightly tweaked, or more tweaked, to be able to have positive sales and success with the end client. So this element of very short-term success needed for the movies does not exist as strongly for the insurance industry.
So that concludes this little specific moment on this comparison. And I hope that I've answered the question that I've received via LinkedIn.