HDFC Life recently launched a product for cancer insurance. Sanjay Tripathy, Senior EVP, Marketing, Products, Digital and E-commerce, HDFC Life, talks about the association with Lisa Ray for the campaign and how the brand is marketing itself through its ‘Sar Utha Ke Jio’ proposition
By SALONI DUTTA
Digital has infused a new level of competition in the insurance marketing space and brands are definitely stepping up to the challenge.
HDFC Life, long-term life insurance solutions provider launched a new brand campaign to promote their latest product offering, HDFC Life Cancer Care. The underlying message the campaign conveys is that to win the cancer battle, it takes more than just emotional strength; it needs financial preparedness too.
Celebrity and cancer survivor Lisa Ray endorsed the cause by telling her story of how she survived cancer and the lessons she learnt along the way. Elaborating on the marketing objective behind the launch, Sanjay Tripathy, Senior EVP, Marketing, Products, Digital and E-commerce, HDFC Life, commented, “Much is said about cancer these days, but the conversations are mostly around physical and mental strength to fight the disease. We absolutely agree with that, but we believe that a person needs to be financially prepared as well. Cancer treatment can cost anything between Rs 3 to Rs 25 lakh and we need to realize that the financial aspect of the fight is the only thing one can have a control on. Being financially prepared is now easy with HDFC Life Cancer Care and if the need does arise, it will allow you to fight with dignity. For the very first time we have used a celebrity to communicate our message as she personifies the journey of a cancer survivor and offers a real life testimonial to the struggle. With her positive attitude and self belief, Lisa Ray embodies the brand philosophy of ‘Sar Utha ke Jiyo’. In this ad, we have thrown light on the not often spoken about factor of the cancer struggle – the financial one.” Apart from television, this message was propagated by other media such as print, OOH, cinema, and digital, which had a significant focus. #RayOfHope was used to run a social media engagement campaign.
The way a product is devised has a lot to do with how the brand will eventually market it. For HDFC Life, there are three things that the company focused on while devising the product and its marketing. Firstly, it is the product features and the ease of purchase. Secondly, and this is also the main communication challenge, is that the discussion should not be around money, but money needs to be a part of the conversation in a subtle fashion. Thirdly, it is about how to create awareness around the product. “That is why the association with Lisa Ray in the current campaign because she is not only a survivor but she speaks a lot about cancer, helping build awareness. Despite insurance, she still pays a huge amount of money for medication and other things. This was the story we wanted to reach people with because money is an important part of the cancer survival journey and we thought none other than Lisa Ray can actually portray that story,” adds Tripathy.
A lot of the brand’s marketing is now focussed on the Digital front. “We are one of the few companies which earn and burn. Our e-commerce segment is more than Rs 150 crores and the marketing spends are not more than 20-25% of that. Our media mix has changed considerably. Currently the overall media money that we spend, close to 50% of that, is on online,” says Tripathy. The brand’s focus is on building engagement. “In our social media communities we focus on building engagement, our Facebook community is very strong and we are Number One in the BFSI segment. Going by the sheer number of Twitter followers, we are Number One in Asia in insurance. We have done really well in terms of our community engagement platforms. For us, social media is all about life, how we can connect with different people at different points of time and we create interesting campaigns where they can connect back with us. With the Cricket World Cup we changed it to #myteammypride and it actually became one of the hashtags trending during the World Cup. Interestingly, it is a complete organic campaign, we did not spend a rupee behind it,” he concludes.
