Betty White & the Making of an Industry

A financial product can exist for years and still be invisible. The transaction can be legal, the structure sound, the market real — and the public will not touch what it does not understand. The work of moving life settlements from a misunderstood transaction into a mainstream idea was marketing work. That work was mine.

The misunderstood asset

For most of its history, the secondary market for life insurance lived in the shadows — useful, legitimate, and almost entirely unknown to the people it could help. The barrier was never the math. It was awareness, trust, and a story the public could recognize. In the early Cleveland days, The Lifeline Program was two people: Scott Page and me, operating as Page & Associates. As the business grew, I grew with it — taking on marketing, communications, and the growth of the company itself, and rising to Executive Vice President as the team expanded and needed someone to answer to. Building the public story, and carrying it into the open, was my work.

Betty White, on the record

The single most important decision in that effort was bringing in Betty White — a strategic choice to give a complex, misunderstood product the most trusted face in America. It was my idea, and I made it stick over the doubt in the room. The company's own anniversary account records exactly that:

When approached about hiring Betty White by Stephen E. Terrell, the company's senior vice president of market development and branding, leadership thought he was joking — but she became the centerpiece of the company's marketing efforts for nearly a decade.— The Lifeline Program, 25th-anniversary press

Stephen E. Terrell with Betty White, spokesperson for The Lifeline Program life settlement campaign — With Betty White — the centerpiece of the campaign, for nearly a decade.

Why her, of anyone

The choice was not obvious. It was a fight. The industry was carrying a black cloud — other companies had built terrible investments on capital that misunderstood what it was buying, and the criminal cases that followed tattooed one word onto the whole category: scam. A legitimate company offering people a real financial option got lumped in with the worst of it. The reputation was the enemy, and it was not ours, but we wore it anyway.

The safe names were the ones being pushed at me — Arnold Palmer, Suze Orman — the credible, expected picks that signaled authority. I refused to be strong-armed into them. I put my foot down and fought for Betty White instead. Not because she was famous, but because the problem was not credibility, it was trust. We needed a trustable soul to lead with a light through a darkened industry — America's sweetheart, a career that spoke for itself, and underneath it someone sassy and real that everyone, young and old, could see themselves in. Authority does not cut through a scam reputation. Being loved does.

The room thought I was joking. I was not. And I was right.

And the decision was mine alone to make. I wanted to bring a face into the industry — not a spokesperson for one company, but a presence the public could trust enough to become the true face of the category itself. That is what she became. The choice of who would carry that was the choice only I was positioned to make, and I made it.

And I made it before everyone caught up. When I contracted her and won her trust, the resurgence had no name yet — no SNL milestone, no polling data, no wire coverage. By the time a 2011 Reuters/Ipsos poll named Betty White the most popular and most trusted celebrity in America, and by the time Reuters was covering her retirement message in January 2012, that trust had been ours for years. She didn't just work with anyone. She chose me.

Stephen E. Terrell walking hand in hand with Betty White at the Los Angeles Zoo, both wearing Lifeline Program scarves — Off the clock — with Betty at the Los Angeles Zoo. The trust was real, and it came first.

The record, in the Times

The Lifeline Program campaign image, as it ran in The New York Times, May 13, 2010. Photograph: Mike Ruiz Photography.

When Betty White hosted Saturday Night Live in May 2010, it drew 12.1 million viewers — the largest audience the show had seen in sixteen years. The New York Times covered the milestone, and the campaign image that ran with the story was credited, in the paper's own words, to "The Lifeline Program and Mike Ruiz Photography." The photograph was Mike Ruiz's; the campaign behind it was ours. On the day the country was talking about Betty White's comeback, my company's name was on the picture that told the story — in the Times.

And the point is not mine alone to make. Years later, writing in ThinkAdvisor under his own byline, the company's president recalled the early work this way: "my colleague Stephen Terrell and I were brainstorming about the life settlement industry." Named, in print, as a colleague and a collaborator on the thinking that built it.

Cashing Out — the Oscar-shortlisted short documentary produced by The New Yorker — depicts the life settlement industry and the company that built its public face. The marketing shown in that film, the media pushes that drove awareness, and the consumer campaigns that moved the category from obscurity into mainstream conversation: those were conceived, organized, and deployed by me. The documentary captures the result of that work. The architect of the work was not on camera.

Behind the camera on the Betty White campaign shoot — the operator framing her on the monitor, a centering mark over her face, as she stands lit on the set — On set — the rig, the monitor, the framing mark on her face. The architect was here.

We built her a throne

The idea was to make her a queen — not a spokesperson reading copy, but a figure the public would want to believe. So we built a throne, set it on branded steps, and put America's most trusted woman on top of it. What happened between the soundstage and the finished frame is the whole job in one picture.

Betty White seated on the gilded campaign throne in a purple tracksuit and silver sneakers, studio equipment visible — Same throne, same afternoon. A tracksuit and sneakers on a soundstage, and the icon it became. The distance between those two frames is the work — and the work was mine.

The finished Lifeline Program campaign image — Betty White enthroned in golden clouds, the category's public face — Same throne, same afternoon. A tracksuit and sneakers on a soundstage, and the icon it became. The distance between those two frames is the work — and the work was mine.

That partnership did what no transaction could: it shifted the public conversation about life settlements from a niche financial service to a mainstream retirement-planning option. The campaign became the category's public face — and it was built from a single marketing instinct that the company first thought was a joke.

The proof is the competition

Once the public understood the idea, the market moved. Competitors followed into a space that had been made visible and credible. No one builds around a thing no one has noticed. The awareness came first — and the awareness was the work.

The campaign, as it ran

The awareness was not an abstraction. It ran in print, nationally, in the language retirees and their advisors actually spoke — plain questions with Betty's face beside them.

The Lifeline Program print advertisement featuring Betty White — 'Retirement forecasts looking gloomy? We can help.' — Consumer print, national. The awareness, as the public met it.

The Lifeline Program print advertisement featuring Betty White — 'Has your retirement bubble burst?' — Consumer print, national. The awareness, as the public met it.

The Lifeline Program print advertisement — Betty White pushing a lawn mower: 'Make sure the grass is greener on your side of the fence!' — Same face, two registers — backyard whimsy for consumers, and “Life is Easy. Blow Bubbles.” for the trades. Photographs: Mike Ruiz Photography

The Lifeline Program trade advertisement — Betty White blowing bubbles: 'We make life settlements easy.' — Same face, two registers — backyard whimsy for consumers, and “Life is Easy. Blow Bubbles.” for the trades. Photographs: Mike Ruiz Photography

Behind the scenes on 'Life is Easy. Blow Bubbles.' — a crew member kneels to blow bubbles toward Betty White, seated in the white chair in the lilac silk blouse — What it cost: several hours, a gallon of bubble juice, and one unreturnable Versace. The bubbles in the winning shot? We blew them.

The Lifeline Program 25th anniversary advertisement — Betty White floating in a bubble: 'I adore a good 25 year old… whether it's a man, a bubbly, or a life settlement company!' — The confidence years — claiming brand-name status alongside Coke and FedEx, then toasting the silver anniversary at 1-855-GO-BETTY. Photographs: Mike Ruiz Photography

The Lifeline Program postcard series — four Betty White quote cards: bubbles, butterflies, the gold throne with bodybuilders, and the queen of Hollywood — The postcard series. Betty’s one-liners were doing social’s job before social was a department. Photographs: Mike Ruiz Photography

The face is not the architect

Every company needs a face, and a face is a real and useful thing. But the face is not the architect. I have made my peace with that distinction.

A studio portrait of Betty White, personally inscribed and signed to Stephen E. Terrell — Signed to me, in her own hand.

Peter Max painted portrait of Betty White blowing bubbles, painted from Stephen E. Terrell's photograph and signed to him by Betty White, presented on an ivory mat — Painted from my photograph by Peter Max, and inscribed to me by Betty White — three hands on one object.
Painting: Peter Max

Stephen E. Terrell seated in the white chair from the Betty White 'Life is Easy. Blow Bubbles.' campaign shoot — The chair from “Life is Easy. Blow Bubbles.” — the Betty White shoot The New York Times carried when she conquered SNL. The architect takes the seat.

Stephen E. Terrell · In Your Face Branding