Future Generali’s moment marketing drive helps it #CoverTheDistance during COVID-19

Ruchika Varma, CMO, Future Generali India Insurance
Ruchika Varma, CMO, Future Generali India Insurance

Insurance companies have upped their activities during the COVID-19 crisis, addressing the concerns of the people, the uncertainties of the market and encouraging people to take care of themselves and their dear ones.

Future Generali also aims to reach out to 10,000 customers and enquire about their well-being through their campaign.

Future Generali India Insurance recently rolled out a social media campaign, #CoverTheDistance, in the time of social distancing. Due to the lockdown, people are now forced to slow down and can spend quality time with their family and friends. The campaign is designed to encourage people to make the most of this time spent with their loved ones, while at home.

#CoverTheDistance features a video that depicts various relationships and focuses on the fact that it is important to stay connected with your loved ones while practising social distancing.

Watch the film:

As revealed by Ruchika Varma, CMO, Future Generali India Insurance, the campaign has achieved an overall reach of more than 15 million, with higher than expected organic leads.

Varma took charge in her current role in January this year and is responsible for marketing communications, product innovations, developing digital capabilities and partnerships and CSR. She has over 18 years of marketing experience across multiple sectors, including financial services, media, travel and consumer goods. Prior to this, she was CMO at IDFC FIRST Bank. She has also held roles in Singapore with entities such as BBC Worldwide, Lonely Planet and Singapore Tourism Board.

In conversation with Adgully, Ruchika Varma sheds more light on the #CoverTheDistance campaign.

What is the objective of the campaign?

Our brand goal is to be a lifetime partner for our consumers by demonstrating expertise through human touch. In the current context, this has become even more accentuated. We want to build a brand that leads with empathy and genuinely address customer needs, as that’s the only way we will end up strengthening relationships with our consumers.

This campaign is a building block of the overall brand goal. We wanted to be current and contextual to the new reality that our audiences were facing, while at the same time creating emotional connect through a positive brand conversation.

Who is your target audience and why did you choose this time of year to execute such a campaign?

Indians are struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic and its fallouts on our economy, our work situations, our jobs, our health and our lifestyle. Our research tells us that a whopping 88 per cent of Indians are deeply worried about their physical, mental or financial health in the current context. There is a new reality that we all live in – and unfortunately, it’s a reality filled with uncertainty and negativity.

From a category perspective, as expected, demand for motor and travel insurance has waned, but we saw an uplift in demand for health insurance.

As a brand offering health insurance products that cover treatment for pandemics like COVID-19, our focus was to use moment marketing to increase awareness of our health insurance products, while having a positive brand conversation amongst the plethora of negativity.

How do consumers participate in the campaign?

We are approaching this campaign in phases and consumer participation is different across these phases.

In the first phase, we wanted to showcase the silver lining in the unprecedented situation of a national lockdown. Our insight was that before the lockdown, hard-working, ambitious Indians were constantly running on a treadmill to achieve their goals. Busy with work and managing responsibilities, people were growing apart from their own family and friends, without even realising it. We saw the lockdown and social distancing as an opportunity to connect with loved ones once again and recover lost ground. The insight came from our consumers and our consumers helped spread the word by engaging with the video across various platforms.

While the first phase helped us establish the brand message of #CoverTheDistance, we will now be starting the second phase which brings our message alive by showing how audiences can cover the distance with their loved ones. In this phase, the brand is playing an active role in creating moments of bonding amongst family and friends through activities that they can enjoy together while at home. We will be doing this through live sessions on our social media, where experts show how husbands can cook a romantic meal for their spouse; dance classes where the entire family can learn a choreographed piece together and by hosting games nights where extended family and friends can join in as well. This phase is entirely about consumer participation in these sessions, where the role of the brand is that of a catalyst to get audiences connected to their loved ones.

What are the touchpoints for the campaign?

This campaign is made for digital through digital. Our media mix for this campaign is based on where people are today. There has been a 61 per cent hike in visits to websites, especially websites in the news, fitness and entertainment genres. YouTube has increased subscriber base by 30 per cent. Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp have become even more popular. Our media mix is an optimal combination of all of these touchpoints.

In our category, people are searching for health policies that cover Coronavirus, and we have ensured that our SEO, SEM and website address this need. Besides the campaign, we have been in constant touch with our consumers to create awareness that their health policies cover treatment for Coronavirus. Consumers are also concerned about service levels and claims processing during this time. We have re-assured our customers that their service will be uninterrupted even during the lockdown. Besides, we have armed our distribution partners with relevant tools that allow for digital prospecting.

Tell us about the creative brief and the agency you partnered with for this campaign.

The creative brief was simple – create awareness for our Health Insurance by making it relevant to the current context. We were also very clear that we have to identify a positive angle to the lockdown.

Our agency partner, WYP and Future Generali team co-created this campaign post multiple brainstorming sessions. During one of those sessions, we hit upon the idea of #CoverTheDistance.

The campaign was time sensitive as we wanted the message to go out as soon as possible after the lockdown. Speed to market was of the essence. But how does one create a video when one can’t go out and shoot? How does one get VO artists when they are stuck at home and don’t have access to recording studios? And how does one do this quickly?

We put all our energies in getting this off the ground and collaboratively worked on creating and refining the product. Flexibility, perseverance and collaboration with our creative agency kept us going and the campaign took only a week from conceptualisation to launch.

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