Q] What led to the launch of Kotak Health Shield? How is it different from the other products available in the market?
The general insurance policy known as the Mediclaim is the commonly available policy in the market where if you fall ill, you submit bills to claim the insurance and the amount you receive will be a percentage of what you spent. Why Health Shield is different is because it gives you the full targeted amount. For example, if you’ve chosen a Rs 5 lakh policy, you will get the full amount irrespective of how much you’ve actually spent, i.e. even if you spend Rs 2,65,000, you will get Rs 5 lakh. Secondly, it is given on diagnosis. So you don’t have to give proof of treatment. You have to give proof of illness. It is a very nice add-on to any existing health plan that you have. So the two are not in conflict with each other, it’s not that you cannot take this one exclusively, but the two are not in conflict with each other. There are a lot of other expenses that don’t get covered in the traditional Mediclaim policy, but this covers them all.
Q] This is one of the prominent outdoor campaigns post the lockdown and comes at a time when most brands have reduced spends on OOH, what led to this decision?
It was completely counterintuitive. Some of us are now coming back to office. I noticed more people are on the road every passing day, yet it is busy and not crowded. So, then it struck me that if people are back on the road, we can place some hoardings in some of these cities. We decided against picking Bombay and Delhi because in these cities the traffic is a bit lesser than the smaller cities where people are used to driving to work like in Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Kolkata. So we targeted those cities. People were going outdoors after nine months, so it was a big decision for us. We asked our colleagues whether they are getting footfall in branches, how frequently are they and the agents visiting them etc. They said they were traveling by motorcycle and cars and so are the clients and advisors. People are out, not fully but say 20%-30%. We have chosen not to put hoardings at the crossing, but on the way. You drive past them, you don’t stand and look.
Q] What is the marketing mix for this campaign?
Two-third of the spends are on Digital and one-third is on Outdoor.
Q] The campaign will end on December 23, what’s the rationale behind that?
It may become a blind spot after 15 days. We want it to be high impact. We are going back after nine months, so we want to see how it goes. This is kind of experimental, and only later will we see the uptake in Google search, the data will come to us next month. We are hoping it is successful. We are getting a lot of interest but the proof of the pudding is in how many Google search hits the website gets ultimately.
Q] Do you think the advertising spends in the BFSI category is back to the pre-Covid-19 levels?
I don’t think anybody will spend so much, the market itself is a bit down and people are still not sure, I would not put BFSI entirely in one bracket because life insurance is a category of its own. We are asking people to pay us money for 20 years, which is a big commitment so you have to be very sure about your own cash flows. So our industry is different but then we are seeing protection requirement coming up a lot. They know that this disease is not discriminating against anyone. There is an uptick definitely. The interest in term policies is there.
