By: Gokul Krishnamoorthy
The Senior Vice President – Digital Business & Marketing, Tata AIG, underlines that the brand is confident of keeping its commitment to ‘complete claims’ in its latest campaign featuring ambassador Ranbir Singh and director Rohit Shett.
“Our digital spends while largely skewed to performance, has seen increasing contribution from brand/top funnel spends. We continuously use AI models coupled with data analytics to prune our cost of acquisition and make our performance campaigns more effective. This has resulted in the queries on the website doubling over the past two years,” says Riaan Rodrigues, Senior Vice President – Digital Business & Marketing, Tata AIG.
“We began this journey in terms of communicating directly to our customers through above the line communication or top funnel communication in 2021. We wanted to have that component as well because finally that is our customer,” adds Rodrigues, who took charge of marketing a year and a half back.
The brand began with the ‘Trusted Naam, Fantastic Kaam’ in late 2021 featuring brand ambassador Ranbir Kapoor. The intent was to reassure customers that no matter what, the brand would keep delivering, keep pushing the envelope and giving them the best possible products and service, explains Rodrigues. The campaign spoke about the experience of purchase, the claims process being digitised and how one could initiate a claim easily.
The general insurance brand launched a campaign for its health insurance offering featuring Kapoor recently. It features director Rohit Shetty playing himself. At the heart of the campaign was the promise of paying out ‘Complete Claims’, using the strategic route of ‘Expect the Expected’. The creative plays on the car action sequences that one has come to expect in Shetty’s films.
The theme of claims was arrived at as it is a key consideration for consumers in the category, explains the marketing head.
“When we talk to new customers, new entrants into the health insurance category, one barrier that is very common is that they are unsure of what will occur when they make a claim. Will the insurer honour the promise they made? Because essentially that’s what you’re selling – you’re selling a promise. We just wanted to assure customers of the absolute intent that we have to pay that claim and to pay it in full. Complete transparency, no random reductions, no finding a shortcut and cutting off anything,” he underlines.
Did the fact that Rohit Shetty and his car chases were used by a used car platform play on their minds? Rodrigues points out that the category and the thought are completely different.
“It’s gone viral. We’ve gotten a lot of good appreciation for it and that’s because people relate to it. People get it very easily and that was essential,” he adds.
The campaigns from 2021 have helped the brand’s top of mind recall improve over the last two years. It reflects in search volumes going up.
Says the marketing head, “It reflects very clearly. Searches have gone up a fair bit. That’s something you look at to gauge the customer pull in a more dynamic sense because that’s the first thing most customers today do. Search has become a fairly good indicator of how well the brand is performing and how well it’s recalled.”
Need To Be Authentic
Tata AIG’s brand campaigns over the past two years have been led largely by TV and digital platforms.
“While we also have become more active on print and OOH, there will be a move to integrate our narrative into everyday conversations through social media,” says Rodrigues, asked about the media mix.
Within ATL, the brand is still television-led. “We still believe we get good ROI on reach. Digital is a top up on that along with other mediums where we use a more targeted approach,” he explains, adding that when it comes to the top funnel ATL campaigns, the approach is medium agnostic.
“The entire awareness funnel and to move the customer up the ladder is channel agnostic. It is a brand affinity that you are trying to create. When we get into below the line spends or performance spends, that’s when you start talking about the channel per se and you start enticing a person to pick a particular channel,” he notes.
The marketer underlines that once the organic channels start firing, the cost of acquisition does drop, as has been the case with his brand. That said, Tata AIG’s marketing spends have gone up.
Rodrigues believes that it’s not just TV with connected TVs and OTT that’s going hybrid, not allowing for a clear cut classification as ‘Digital’ or ‘Linear’.
“Some people would call C-TV digital. Some people still say it’s the television in the house. So it depends how you look at it. But we have started including a bit of (if I can call it) hybrid devices or mediums into our plans. And it’s not just about hybrid on television. Even other forms like OOH are getting hybrid today,” he explains.
Rodrigues cedes that with newer entrants coming in, the insurance space is getting crowded. While the advertising landscape itself is cluttered, the insurance space is ‘heating up more’. This makes marketing’s task tougher, but the objective sharper.
He elaborates, “The first thing we need to do from an advertising lens is to stand out and cut through that clutter. You want to be noticed wherever you are. It’s something we focus on a lot and believe that we need to make every interaction count. As insurers we don’t have a high frequency of purchase. So those interaction points are far and few, and those are the ones that really need to count for the customer to go back into their own space and say that Tata AG is a great insurer to be with. And that is not really so much about communication, but about being who you are. It’s about being authentic.”
An Expanding Market
There must have been deliberations on making a promise of ‘Complete Claims’ in a category like insurance, where one slip up can go viral on social media. The brand is fully geared up at the back end and the campaign is a reflection of its intent and readiness to deliver on the promise, underlines Rodrigues.
“We wouldn’t have made the promise if we weren’t sure that our systems are ready to deliver. Tata AIG has every intent to pay every claim in full. There are a lot of things about the ethos and the way the process is within the company, which ensures that,” he adds.
Besides claims, ‘Expect the Expected’ will have other legs as well. But claims will be the core. One will also see testimonials from customers that have been collected over the years.
The media and marketing efforts today are also to address a market that is expanding beyond the top cities. With spending power no longer concentrated in the metros and larger towns, the possibilities for players in the category have just expanded manifold.
The spokesperson elaborates, “Across categories, there is this penetration into tier 2, 3 and beyond. Insurance in a larger sense is a discretionary product (with the exception of auto insurance). It is still a penetration game and what’s making it possible is the fact that anyone can now search for it online and understand more about insurance. That research component is getting solved by the reach of the internet and smartphone penetration. They can reach out to the nearest agent or buy online post that. So this whole mix, the hybridisation of everything that we do, is an important push when it comes to penetration of the category.”
BLURB
“The first thing we need to do from an advertising lens is to stand out and cut through that clutter. You want to be noticed wherever you are. It’s something we focus on a lot and believe that we need to make every interaction count.”
(MN4U Syndicate)