In conversation with Abhishek Gupta, CMO, Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance
10 October 2018
Tell us little bit about the brands association with sports? How did it begin, also how beneficial is it when all brands want to associate with cricket?
A: Edelweiss Group has been associated with sports for more than a decade now and it is important to understand the context of why we chose this space. It is no secret that cricket occupies a large mindshare among the Indian audience when it comes to sports. This has led to other sports being ignored for far too long and as a result non-cricket athletes have remained out of the spotlight – in terms of public support and endorsements from corporates.
In 2009, when the Olympic Gold Quest was being set up, we saw an opportunity to extend support to non-cricket sports through our CSR arm EdelGive. We realised that we have a larger role to play to here as a brand. We decided to begin funding then and supported women athletes like Mary Kom, Ayonika Paul, and PV Sindhu.
Consider our brand ambassadors Rani Rampal, MirabaiChanu, Dipa Karmakar, Hima Das, or Manika Batra for a moment. They have had to overcome such trying personal circumstances, and have had to train in poor infrastructure to get recognition at a global stage. Despite all these achievements, there is negligible awareness about these athletes. So, this was not just a brand opportunity for us but also our civicresponsibility to support them in whatever way we can – be it providing them the resources they need to train or create awareness about their achievements and galvanise public support for them.
With this objective in mind, we sponsored the Indian Contingent at Rio Olympics in 2016, which included insuring each athlete for Rs. 1 crore. As you might be aware, we have inked a long term association with the Indian Olympic Association very recently. We are extremely privileged that we sponsored Team India at both the Common Wealth Games and Asian Games.
These alternative sports and athletes representing them share a lot of common values with us as a brand – perseverance, grit, tenacity and a winning attitude. This association has helped us create a positive brand aura and pushed up our awareness, visibility and consideration.
How do you strategize your reach to the consumers?
A: We have adopted a multi-pronged approach to reach our customers. A customer can consume your content through any medium – traditional mediums like TV, print, OOH, radio or relatively new mediums like digital and then decide to interact with any of the channels that she is comfortable with.
Our focus has been on building robust distribution capabilities because we want to make ourselves easily accessible to our customers from all quarters and in whichever way convenient. We are a multi-channel business with partners across agency, direct, online, and bank assurance channels. Such partners are truly our backbone and are helping us effectively communicate with our customers.
Please tell us about your new campaign ‘Zindagi Plus’. How is Edelweiss promoting different aspects of its life term insurance policies? Is there an aspect of personal touch added to the campaigns?
Let me briefly explain our new term offering Zindagi Plus before we dive into the campaign. After a thorough process of collecting and analysing customer insights, we designed Zindagi Plus, a comprehensive term plan. The very essence of this product is that it not just addresses the existing and emergent needs of the customers, but also the unsaid ones. Better Half Benefit, a unique option provided as a part of Zindagi Plus, helps our customers take care of their spouse in their absence.
We created two ad films – one revolving around the daily give and take between a couple and another one where were leveraged a real life love story between two achievers. In the latter, we showcased a conversation between our brand ambassador Heena Sidhu and her husband & coach Ronak Pandit, wherein they are discussing their future together – both personally and professionally.
Both these films have seen a spectacular reception so far across all platforms. Together, both these films have received about 5.5 million views on Facebook, with a 14 million reach. We have garnered more than 50,000 engagements and 6000 shares. We have also experimented with new affiliates, OTT, and apps for this campaign and have seen promising results.
Over the last few years many players have come in to the life insurance industry, how do you stand out?
A: As one of the latest entrants to the life insurance space, we found ourselves in a unique position. We had the opportunity of looking at the experience of our older peers, learning certain things and unlearning certain things.
When we started this journey 7 years ago, we were crystal clear about one thing – we owned the responsibility to help people make an informed choice. With this objective, we worked closely with our partners at Tokio Marine Holdings to create an analytical tool called Vijaypath which enables our customers to understand their needs. It accounts for a customer’s income, consumption pattern, existing liabilities and goals to derive any monetary needs they may have.
Over these past 7 years, our focus has also been on what can we do differently and how can we do better for our customers. If you study the bouquet of our products – we have a well-balanced diverse portfolio with products that provide for unique, formerly unaddressed customer needs.
We have consistently shown women as the decision makers. We are seeing a slight shift in behaviour and more importantly want to promote the thought that women should accord priority to insurance when they are doing financial planning.
Source -
http://www.pitchonnet.com/blog/2018/10/10/in-conversation-with-abhishek-gupta-cmo-edelweiss-tokio-life-insurance/
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