Aegon Religare Life Insurance, the three-month-old insurance company, uses under-insurance as the peg to do the unthinkable.
From what appears, Rajiv Jamkhedkar likes to defy convention. In mid-August this year, Jamkhedkar announced to the press that the one-month-old Aegon Religare Life Insurance (ARLI), of which he is the CEO, targeted branch break-even in three years.
The industry average, incidentally, is eight years.
The period following that announcement saw a few more industry firsts from ARLI: an interactive helpdesk service for customers, some product innovations, and, most recently, a life insurance ad campaign that, believe it or not, hinges on a selling point of the product — a rarity in the life-insurance business.
The brand campaign, launched in the first week of September, began with teasers on television and outdoor media channels. The 10-second teasers showed a grim-looking Irfan Khan dressed in a surgical gown, wondering if the viewer is afflicted with a mysterious disease called K.I.L.B. The teasers ended abruptly, like they do, with the note “Kya apko K.I.L.B. hai?”(Do you suffer from K.I.L.B.?)
The outdoor teaser campaign received a better response. “It generated a lot of curiosity. Some even speculated that K.I.L.B. was the name of an upcoming Karan Johar movie,” chuckles Contract Advertising’s vice-president and executive creative director Raghu Bhatt, who worked on the ARLI campaign.
The TVC (television commercial) starts from where the TV teaser had left off. A display board with “Kya apko K.I.L.B. hai?” painted in awkwardly-big, bold letters fills the opening frame. Then, the camera swiftly pans out to reveal the interiors of a train compartment.
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The 45-second sequence has all the elements that define a train journey — the background chug, the intermittent flashes of light bouncing off the compartment walls, the hawk-eyed but indifferent ticket checker standing in the aisle, the motley group of seemingly affable passengers. Director Pradeep Sarkar’s deft imagery evokes familiarity and nostalgia at once.
A curious passenger from the lower berth, who is the first to notice the cryptic message, turns to his fellow passengers to ask whether they know what K.I.L.B. really means.
Eventually, Irfan Khan, seated on the opposite berth, reveals the real meaning of K.I.L.B. for everyone’s benefit. “Kum Insurance Lene ki Bimari,” says Khan, punctuating every word. Khan appears indignant about the fact that people are so prudent about small, everyday purchases, but when it comes to something as critical as insurance, they settle for inadequate sums.
The clip ends with Khan announcing an ARLI helpline number to the group, leaving the viewers with an advice: it is better to be uninsured than to stay under-insured.
Fuzzy logic
A life insurance commercial that speaks about life insurance is rare. It is not hard to understand why. Creating an effective pitch for a product — the very mention of which reminds the customer of the brevity of his life — is tough.
It’s a blind spot that creative directors all over the world recognise. Even the life-insurance campaigns of the now-nationalised AIG (American International Group) and Max New York Life take recourse to subtle messaging, steering clear of the product pitch.
ARLI’s brief to the agency, however, was to keep it straight. Bhatt recalls that Jamkhedkar, and the ARLI branding and communications director Deepak Pandey had made it clear to the agency that the campaign “will be honest and tell the viewer like it is”.
Pandey tells why: “A dipstick survey conducted before the launch had revealed to us that a majority of customers were under-insured.” This proved to be an important find because it allowed the creative team to take the pitch head-on.
Aiming high
There is a bigger reason behind ARLI’s straight-talk. According to a Northbridge Capital Asia report, India’s life insurance industry in 2007-08 grew by 23 per cent — more than two-and-a-half times the world average. The market share of private operators is growing even faster. In business policies alone, where Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) registered a growth rate of 5 per cent, the private sector saw 73 per cent growth.
Jamkhedkar believes that the insurance sector is set to undergo a radical change much like the banking sector. “The sector will use technology, product innovation and consolidation — the same tools that the banking industry used in the 1990s and the early years of the 21st century — to transform itself,” he says.
ARLI’s cut-to-the-chase strategy seems to emanate from the same belief. Most other insurance companies use marketing campaigns to establish and sustain brand recall among the consumers, leaving the rest to the sales force. ARLI, on the other hand, intends to use its first marketing campaign as a beachhead, which will help the 1,000-strong direct sales force move in much faster than its rivals.
Pandey says that the campaign is already showing the desired result, if the initial response is anything to go by. He claims that ARLI has received 40,000 completed applications from potential customers so far whereas the normal response rate following any insurance campaign hovers in the vicinity of 10,000-12,000 applications.
The company has set big targets for the current financial year. It plans to acquire 60,000 new customers and receive Rs 100 crore of new business premiums during the period.
ARLI, which started operations on a base capital of Rs 200 crore, recently added another Rs 370 crore to its base. However, it is too early to say if exuberance and out-of-the-box advertising will be enough for a three-month-old venture to help it take on the might of much bigger and established insurance players.