Aviva ropes in Sachin Tendulkar for new social media campaign

It’s a universal truth that while a mother role is indispensible in a child’s life, the role of a father as a protector, whether financial, physical or emotional is no less important. Highlighting on this very fact and the importance of financial planning for securing the future of one’s ward, Aviva Life Insurance has roped in iconic cricketer, none less than master blaster Sachin Tendulkar for its new social media campaign that was unveiled recently.

Titled, “ Aviva Padding up with Sachin: how to get the perfect stance,” the objective of the campaign is to make young fathers realize the fact that financial planning plays a very critical role for their children’s secured future. Aviva India’s strategy is based upon creating and feeding engaging content in the social media channels. The campaign conceptualized by BBDO has produced a series of webisodes for which the content onion will focus on protection related content drawing analogies from cricket; the next level’s cover content on financial literacy, products and parenting for young fathers.  It will be promoted through social media and supported by a robust digital advertising campaign so as to drive home the point to the target audience that is young parents in the age-group of 28-44 years.

Speaking to Adgully on the campaign, Rishi Piparaiya, Director, Marketing & Bancassurance, Aviva India said, “Through this we aim to further strengthen our association with fatherhood and protection. With this the key messages we want young parents to understand that their early steps will go a long way in securing the financial future of their children. Our vision is to build a community of financially aware young parents and to achieve this, we see a significant role for both entertaining content for parents as well as infotainment around financial planning; and Aviva’s products as key pillars.

On choosing digital, Piparaiya says, “the growing passion and reach of the internet has compelled content consumption and engagement to a large extent. So to make use of the growing technology, we wanted to give out the message in an interesting way and what else can be more interesting than to produce content for netizens. Also this step would strength the father-child relationship in an engaging way.”

He believes that pure play product messaging only disrupts the consumer’s natural web behaviour. “This is where we believe that we have bucked the trend by using content creation, rather than content disruption, as an approach. Testimony to this is the fact that we have crossed one lakh likes on our Facebook page in a short span and achieved a high engagement score on Twitter,” Piparariya said.

Speaking about the content strategy, he said, “We believe that content will be the key in terms of  scaling up and making Aviva the ‘buzziest’ life insurance brand online among their core target audience in this digital era. Marketing is fairly incomplete without digital media and social media, the key difference that social media brings to the table is that it allows you to have conversations with your customers unlike any other medium. It’s far more engaging and by far the best way to reach your customer, in this day and age.”

Aviva seeks to provide a unique opportunity for fathers to train and engage with their kids. The first webisode to be released in the series is on Sachin’s signature shot – Straight Drive. The next series to be unveiled shortly will be on his other signature moves like Cover Drive, Pull Shot and Square Cut and will be released basis audience poll through contests in social media.

Well this is the first phase of the campaign and according to Piparariya, there will be a lot more in the future focusing on education, literacy, product and parenting etc.