Abhishek Gupta on why women form the core of Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance’s marketing

Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance, a new-age life insurance brand, has consistently focused on women protagonists in their marketing efforts, featuring some well-known personalities like ace cricketer Mithali Raj for their ‘Flexi Savings Plan’ campaign titled ‘Meri Marzi Ka Plan’, and actress Mona Singh for the ‘Total Protect Plus’ campaign titled ‘Hum Karke Rahenge’, which puts women at the forefront as women advisors. They have also historically associated with female athletes like Mary Kom, Dipa Karmakar, Heena Sidhu, Saina Nehwal, and more.

In the past, the insurance company had released a campaign expressing the fact that every girl has a Ma Durga inside her. Their campaigns evoke empathy, share captivating narratives, and resonate with the dreams and aspirations of the customers, communicating the significance of protection of their loved ones, thereby securing a bright future for them.

During a conversation with Adgully, Abhishek Gupta, the Chief Marketing Officer of Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance, discussed the company’s primary objective of becoming a preferred brand for customers and distributors. He also emphasised their commitment to representing women in a strong and positive light across all their campaigns. Additionally, Gupta touched on the topic of changes in customer behaviour and various other relevant subjects during the interview.

What form the core thoughts behind Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance’s marketing strategy? What are the marketing activities undertaken by it this year?

Insurance is an industry that relies heavily on its distributors, because customers in India require some form of assistance when buying and prefer face to face insurance advisory. So, while the customer is undoubtedly a key audience for us, the distributor also forms an important cohort for us to interact consistently and continuously for us. So, our objective is quite clear – we want to become a brand of choice for customers as well as distributors.

With this objective driving us, there are a couple initiatives we are implementing:

Distributor Delight: Enabled by technology, we are investing in building the right tools that can meaningfully support distributor needs and facilitate an improvement in overall customer interaction. There are primarily 2 areas we are working on – training and performance management.

Customer Experience: Today’s customer expects their experience with an insurance company to be the same as e-commerce buying. So, we are relooked at our entire customer journey to make it simpler and hassle free. Be it eKYC or risk assessment, we are looking at leveraging digital solutions to elevate every transactional experience the customer is having with us.

Personalisation: We have always been an insight-driven organisation and that has helped us differentiate ourselves in this industry. These insights have also helped us stay ahead of the curve on the Personalisation front. I expect this to be the most vital customer expectation in years to come as they seek flexibility in their financial products. We have made significant strides on this front with some path-breaking products and we will continue to do the same.

What is the vision behind Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance’s consistent association with women protagonists in marketing?

In any intensely competitive market, what makes you stand apart as a company is your brand equity. Our brand equity has been built on a few key pillars and we will continue to build on these pillars – Differentiated product offerings, Goodwill through community efforts, a strong employer brand, and a long-standing association with women athletes.

We have had a tradition of creating industry-first products or introducing unique features that transform the product category, resonate with our customers, and are a delight for our distributors to sell. We have been consistently making community efforts, our flagship project has been Organ Donation initiative, which has earned us immense goodwill not only externally, but also within our own workforce. Our employer brand has also evolved over the last decade+ as we have brought in flexible and employee-centric People Practices.

Last and most important has been our association with female athletes, which is the cornerstone of our brand. Since early years, we have supported multiple female athletes and consciously invested in their brand, because there has been an apparent imbalance in the way Cricket has attracted a majority of investments across sectors and brands. This approach eventually matured into our differentiated approach of showcasing female protagonists in campaigns.

We realised, only a fraction of women advice/ sell insurance and buy insurance in their household. It is usually a man who sells and buys insurance. We wanted to capture an aspirational space, wherein we promote women to take on insurance advisory and also proactively manage their finances including buying insurance. Currently, of the ~25 lakh life insurance advisors, only 30% are women. A similar percentage of women are buying insurance. What these figures don’t reflect is the fact that women are the key influencers in any household decision including the purchase of an insurance policy. So, why not acknowledge that and put it front and centre.

How do you conceptualise the storytelling and campaign narratives to resonate with the women TG? Do you also see wider ramifications across geographies?

All our storytelling is rooted in insights. What I must highlight is that while we portray female protagonists in all our campaigns, some campaigns are made for a wider audience and not only women. If it is a product campaign, the product becomes the central driver for our conceptualisation process. If it’s a brand film, highlighting our proposition of Zindagi Unlimited, our attempt is to get into the mind of the individual we are basing the story on. For instance, our recent Mother’s Day film is based on one of our customers and how she coped with losing her husband. We had to put ourselves into her shoes not only as a mother, but also as an individual. We had to understand her challenges of managing a business and household alone after her husband’s death.

The creative process for each campaign is very different and we try to make it more participative so that we can hear diverse opinions. In essence, our focus on insights remains at the core of our communication strategy, and we continue to celebrate the crucial role of women in shaping our brand narrative.

With women as the focal point of the campaign, does it make the targeting a bit skewed? How do you avoid that?

As I mentioned earlier, while we portray women as the protagonists in all campaigns, some campaigns are aimed at a wider audience and not only one cohort, which is the women. I think the approach is not to target one set of audience, but make it more inclusive of women, who have not been the focus of insurance advertising for decades. Most of our product campaigns specifically are very family-focussed, and we believe that women are the ones that hold the family unit together. One buys a life insurance product to either secure family in their absence or create wealth for their future and that message resonates strongly with women who are the primary nurturers of any family.

What are your observations on how insurance marketing has evolved in India? How have the needs and aspirations of the consumers changed as well as what are the key factors driving growth?

Insurance marketing has certainly come a long way over the last 2 decades, but has largely oscillated between 3 factors – morbidity, hope, and humour – over the years. However, there are newer themes emerging, with customer needs becoming more pronounced in marketing campaigns. Brands are seeing that the use cases for life insurance go beyond death claim – it is a savvy instrument to build your wealth, plan your retirement, build contingency funds, and much more. This change is starting to also reflect in the way the customer is perceiving the product category.

As the industry matures aligned with customer expectations, I expect marketing to evolve too. The changes in customer behaviour and aspirations are often triggered by significant events, the most recent example being the Covid-19 pandemic. You will see a reasonable difference between marketing pre- and post-Covid, because the pandemic has brought behavioural shifts in people, especially in terms of understanding the importance of protection.

The value of families has become more pronounced, and the insurance category, which focuses on family protection, has certainly benefited from this shift. Additionally, it has exposed us to unpredictable days, as we all have seen cases where incomes have gone down, or jobs have been cut. This has accentuated the need to create a savings pool. Just as individuals have become more health conscious; they are also imbibing the habit of improving financial fitness.

All these positive shifts are augmenting the appeal of the product category and supporting the growth of the industry.