Complicating Communication

The latest Reliance advertisement features Hrithik Roshan as a Pied Piper. Here is the YouTube link for those who have not seen the ad, or have seen it but not found it attractive enough to remember it.

Hrithik Roshan dances beautifully to the fluty Reliance trademark music with a flute in hands, hearing which a number of ‘mouse shaped’ things follow him all the way through the roads of the town and fall from the cliff, into, I assume, the water.

This is the only impression I got when I first saw the advertisement. I kept thinking about that quintessential essence, The Message, all through the night. Initially, I thought the ‘mice’ must be customers, but it didn’t make sense for them to fall down from the cliff. Then, I thought they must be the competitors who are always trying to follow Reliance and end up going nowhere but down finally. I had to see the advertisement once more to ascertain that these were things like “Conditions apply”, “STD” etc. that were falling down – funda being that Reliance’s scheme is straightforward, simple and comes with no strings attached.

This reminded me of an article I had read recently. The article talks about how complex language is weakening brands. Though it focuses on how one should focus on specifics rather than generalities, the point is “Let’s focus on the message, the single point agenda. There is no point in using all our linguistic skills in trying to complicate matters for millions of customers processing thoughts in a multitude of different ways”.

In the past one week, I have seen a slightly modified version of the same Reliance ad. The dancing sequences have been truncated, suddenly the Marketing & Communications team out there seems to have realized that maybe something is wrong after all, the message about what exactly the Pied Piper is trying to do with the mice is not getting across. The advertisement has now been modified with textual insertions on the descriptions of the scheme – 50 paise per call, no conditions attached, same charges for all kinds of calls etc.

I wonder why brands cannot be smarter in being to the face and to the point, rather than try being subtle and use all their ‘business energies’ in setting cryptic crosswords for viewers. The viewer does not like crosswords for advertisements, he actually does not like advertisements. He switches channels and moves on to the next show in the flick of a second. Maybe, here, the creators were riding on Hrithik’s face value to make the ad click. That brings us back to the eternal celebrity endorsement question, “Can you make your brand so dependent on your ambassador that you forget to put forward the benefits of your brand and product and focus instead on the skills (in this case dancing) of the celebrity endorsing it?” If yes is an answer to that, it sounds like a very unhealthy option in my opinion.

Celebrity Endorsements – I

I came across this article through a friend the other day. It refers to a study that states that tiny psychological effects in advertisements can have potentially enormous impact on demand, more of an impact than price. That is, a letter offering short term financial loans receives more interest when there is a picture of a smiling lady on the corner even if the rate of interest is higher than those on letters sent out to some other customers without the picture. This result set me thinking on a slightly deviant track.

To what extent do celebrity endorsements influence potential customers? There are two different aspects to this that come to my mind immediately.

One is about using a product to fulfill an aspiration like

• A shampoo, expecting to have beautiful hair or soft hair or dandruff free hair (endorsed by film stars like Priyanka Chopra, Shilpa Shetty and Kareena Kapoor)
• A face cream or lotion, expecting to look Fair & Lovely
• A soap (for a long time, Lux has been endorsed by beautiful Bollywood actresses)

Here, the impact on the buying behavior is quite apparent and expected too.

The other aspect is more relevant to this post. This is when the product to be purchased is purely, or almost purely functional. For instance, if a person is looking at buying a financial product, say, a mutual fund or a life insurance policy, how much importance does he give to ‘who’ is endorsing the product?

Will I choose to take a housing loan from HDFC Bank as against SBI if, hypothetically speaking, Aamir Khan endorses it. Of course, the fact that someone as famed as Aamir chooses to bank with HDFC might be a tipping point. But, I would also rationally know that Aamir is not part of my sample set really when it comes to housing loans, as, he has perhaps never taken one. I might be able to relate to the advertisement much better if a tie and suit wearing, 25 year old consultant endorses it, for, that is what I am. I might aspire to be as rich as Aamir someday, but that is not the same kind of aspiration as aspiring to have beautiful hair like Shilpa Shetty and a flawless, pearl like complexion like Sonam Kapoor (L’Oreal). In the case of a housing loan, an Aamir Khan has no context with me.

There are real life examples to this kind of endorsement. Aviva Life Insurance signed Sachin Tendulkar as their brand ambassador in 2007. I vaguely remember seeing him in some advertisements, but these days, I do not even see advertisements on Aviva Life on TV, forget Sachin in the ads. However, a quick search on the Aviva website reveals that they have launched an Aviva Sachin Century plan, a unit linked savings cum protection plan. I do suspect that any Tom, Dick or Harry would have sufficed to endorse the Aviva Life advertisement as long as the message was sent across. A child plan endorsed by a normally salaried father who is looking at the benefit from real terms when the child turns 18, a protection plan by a bread winner who does not want his family to suffer lest something happens to him. Doesn’t that represent the target set more rightly when compared to larger than life heroes and crorepati cricket stars endorsing it?

However, an article here states that the trend is on towards celebrity endorsements for financial products. It is a matter of time before we learn how successful these advertisements will be in boosting the sale of the life insurance products and mutual funds they plan to publicize. Will they boost up the revenues of film stars and sports stars further or bring about a realisation of a different kind in the marketing departments of these companies?

Risky Risk

 

The preamble below is for the purpose of readers who might be unfamiliar with the Indian life insurance industry. The actual subject matter of the post starts from Paragraph 2.

Around a decade back, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) enjoyed a monopoly in the life insurance sector. Awareness about insurance was low, life insurance penetration even lower. Then, the markets were opened and competition flooded the market. All was for the good, so to say. Enlightenment about insurance increased by leaps and bounds. But, the idea of risk was still a new concept in the Indian market. Companies had to use the “Tax sop under 80CCC” line to attract customers. People were buying insurance, not with the intention of covering their risks, but to save on tax money. However, they were buying insurance which in itself was a success. And then did the story take a U – turn. A couple of years back, tax sops were revised. It became no longer attractive for people to look towards insurance for saving themselves some tax money as other, more attractive products got added to the list.

Selling insurance is not the same as selling FMCG. More than half the time (definitely more than that), the potential customer is not going to walk up the steps of an insurance firm and buy the product. Maybe (s)he will, in case of motor insurance, which is compulsory. Otherwise, insurance, specifically life, involves a lot of ‘push’.

What is the need of a life insurance customer? Is the customer just interested in risk coverage? Or, does he like believing that he would live for a long time, but his life span increases in a tension free world if he safely insures himself? Or, does he like investing in it like how he would in a Mutual Fund, deriving the primary benefit out of linking it to the market and keeping the risk coverage as a secondary and less important benefit?

Keeping all these in mind, what is the case that insurance companies have taken to the market to sell their wares?

As far back as I can remember, LIC used to toe the “During Life, after life” (‘Vaazhum Bodhum Vazzhkaiku Piragum’ in Tamil) line in their advertisements. One of them portrayed the breadwinner’s untimely demise leaving his family regretting over not insuring his life which could have helped them lead a comfortable life. Though such advertisements did put off the viewer, LIC was jus going the “scare to death” way of increasing its base. It subsequently moved on to toned down versions such as a widow marrying off her only daughter, thanks to the insurance policy that her husband had taken when alive.

The new entrants, if they had any hope, had it in differentiating themselves, for LIC as a brand was known for its reliability. This has led to interesting concepts that these companies have come up with to sell the concept of risk.

ICICI uses the “Jeethe Raho” (Live long) concept where the wife explains to the husband that insurance is not just a ‘death benefit’ tool but a safety model which secures the family’s future as a whole and comes back in a circle to help the person lead a longer, tension – free life.

 

 

 

 

 

HDFC says, “Sar Utha Ke Jiyo” (Live with respect) without expecting anyone else’s helping hand for your kids’ education, your old age etc. Their latest advertisement shows a kid who is worried as to who will buy him games if his Papa gets lost and then his Papa says that even if he gets lost, he would buy it for him. This advertisement, somehow, did not go too well with me. It had an irritating effect. Surely, there could be a better way of representing the concept of “Live with respect” than telling a small kid that he would get his games even if his father gets lost.

 

 

 

 

Aegon Religare, a relatively new entrant in the industry, toes a different strategy altogether. It says that the amount of money you may have insured your life with, today, might not be enough a few years hence because of rising inflation and exponentially increasing prices. Quite unique a concept, it looks at value sales instead of volume sales. I wonder how relevant it is to the Indian market where insurance has not reached a majority of the population yet and where taking an insurance policy itself is a big deal. In such a market, proposing the idea of increasing one’s cover of insurance sounds quite premature, and seems to assume that the target group would be large enough to sustain the company. But, there is definitely hope for such an idea to blossom in the years to come.

Despite all the education and awareness that various advertisements by private life insurers have provided, the Indian consumer still prefers the concept of investment over the concept of risk – cover. Hence, it looks like for many more years to come, companies will have to follow the route of “investment based insurance” to attract customers to their fold.