Insurance Maxims

I bet all of you guys who’ve been following IPL would know Sanju by now. Sanju, who just gets lost in his iPod music, can’t hear his wife calling him, and ends up scaring the living hell out of her. And she’s not easily scared, judging by an earlier Vodafone ad 😉 In case, you really don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look at it here.

The Sanju situation is something that could happen to us at any point of time, and i think their understanding of the consumer mindset has been bang on target with this one. All of us, who know we’re not exactly in the healthiest of states, but haven’t done much about it since we believe in our immortality. The ad execution keeps you glued to the storyline, expecting the worst and finally delivering a ‘Oh thank God’ moment’, but leaving the message behind loud and clear. Its a story that I can identify with, and that makes it powerful.

Its part of a series of communication from Max New York. The other two that i have seen are this and this. Though the ‘child’s dreams’ path is a heavily trodden one (HDFC’s ‘Haan, Papa’ comes to mind immediately), the other two themes were pretty good and managed to strike a chord, at least in my case. And they’re definitely a good context led follow up for this.

The last one is the guy who’s been giving up his own dreams at various times and having his decisions forced upon him by various things like parental approval, family, its stability and security, children’s future etc, and finally during old age. The implementation is classic, as every time he almost takes a decision he sees his ‘responsibilities’ appearing before him. This one is for pension plans, and ends with its message to finally end those compromises. Again, very easy to identify with. Much better than this, for instance.

While its easy to say that most communication these days aims for slice of life scenes, its something very difficult to execute, especially since most brands like to hog footage. The difference in this set is that it gives the story most importance, gives a context and then shows how the product offers a solution. Incidentally, I also liked the humour pitch that was in vogue earlier –  this from TATA AIG, and HDFC’s take on other financial products like Savings or Mutual Funds. I wonder why HDFC didn’t adopt this tone for insurance, maybe they felt it was too serious a subject?

All well and good, but i always wonder about the role of brand vs performance as a factor in decision making as far as financial products go. Yes, you wouldn’t choose it if you didn’t know about it, but is heavy TV advertising the most optimal way to build equity?

until next time, i guess TVC works as some kinda insurance 😉