We decided on a bold, exaggerated narrative: Sheena Kapoor on ICICI Lombard’s new ad

ICICI Lombard, one of India’s leading private insurance company, recently launched a digital campaign – #UnbelievableButTrue – to promote BeFit, a rider policy that provides cashless OPD and also covers physiotherapy, virtual consultations, and teleconsultation sessions through its signature IL TakeCare App and on the website along with other health indemnity products.

The campaign will take into its ambit digital marketing films, digital and social media platforms. To refute the idea that insurance is only useful when someone is hospitalised, or that insurance only covers major health expenses, the video & creatives highlight the myriad benefits of BeFit, which include virtual medical consultations, pharmacy expenses, physiotherapy sessions, diagnostic services, and even wellness and preventive care.

In conversation with Adgully for their column TALKING INSIGHTS, Sheena Kapoor, Head – Marketing, Corporate Communication and CSR, ICICI Lombard, elaborates on the campaign and also reiterates how customer centricity forms the core of all activities at ICICI Lombard, and that it is this ethos that they want to echo via their new digital campaign featuring the BeFit cover with cashless OPD benefits.

What’s the objective behind your new digital campaign - #UnbelievableButTrue, which which offers cashless OPD and wellness benefits? Who are you targeting with these films?

We have just launched the ICICI Lombard’s Befit Cover digital campaign on the premise of #UnbelievableButTrue. The objective is to create awareness of one of its kind ‘Befit Cover’ that provides unbelievable customer benefits of cashless OPD and wellness benefits such as Doctor consultations, physiotherapy sessions, pharmacy/ chemist bills of medicines and lab/ diagnostic tests and more. The central idea is to reach out to retail customers, who typically would avail of health insurance policy only subject to hospitalisation, while the routine check-ups with doctors, health tests, blood tests or medicinal bills do not come under the purview.

We are targeting the common man across India, both existing as well as new customers and providing assurance of an expansive health cover for common day to day ailments like cold, cough, fever, sprain, backache or any other minor symptom from both a curative as well as a preventive stand point. All this and more with a completely cashless, seamless experience across our network of pharmacies, hospitals, clinics and doctors. I think the crucial difference is between pre-hospitalisation and non-hospitalisation expenses or, in other words, cashless OPD services. We aim to speak to the customer who may find their existing health policy inadequate for lifestyle, everyday health concerns.

With this campaign, we hope to strengthen and reinforce our brand positioning as a complete health and well-being partner for our customers.

How did you arrive at the consumer insights for these films and thereafter how did the creative idea emerge and what was the thinking here?

At ICICI Lombard, we invest heavily in keeping our ears to the ground and unearthing consumer insights, trends and pain points or latent opportunities. We have always been a pioneer in identifying trends and providing timely solutions to our customers, in keeping with our brand ethos of “Nibhaaye Vaade”. One of our studies showed that there has been a crying need for customers to partner with an insurer who would provide comprehensive health insurance package for non-critical or common ailments or routine medical expenses. While a lot of media and industry attention has been focused on the underlying issues related to the medical infrastructure, the less critical and more commonplace issues surrounding routine over-the-counter medication, general physician consultations, blood test/ X-rays were largely ignored. Therein, we saw this opportunity and decided to introduce Befit Cover.

Furthermore, post pandemic, many of us have fallen behind with our fitness regime with easy-to-access facilities becoming no longer accessible, such as parks, jogging tracks, gyms, swimming pools, and so forth. For a country where over 60% of the medical expenditures are out-of-pocket, not much has been done in this regard.

Given that the proposition is so compelling and an industry first of cashless OPD services, the closest analogy was ‘Ripley’s Believe It or Not’ and thereby the central thought about UnbelievableButTrue!

We decided on a bold, exaggerated narrative using dry humour as a tonality to drive home the message of how unbelievable and yet realistic and achievable the claims are. Along with Ogilvy, we came up with a premise of everyday parlance in a realistic setting by introducing extremely foreign or novel causal elements bordering on the bizarre, narrations with respect to common ailments like cold, skin rash, minor burns, etc. We delivered the punch by construing these ‘causal elements’ as believable, while dialing up the respective product benefits as the ‘UnbelievableButTrue’ phenomena.

The films are quirky, witty and endearing and it is very rare that the story telling can evoke a chuckle from the viewer, while also explaining the key benefits of the product and all within the tight regulatory guidelines as a framework. The campaign comprises of 3 films based in a school setting between two central characters – one a Science Teacher or ‘Masterji’ and his pal, the PT teacher. The humour is dry and the science professor lends credibility to the absolutely ludicrous stories of aliens or dragons or Anaconda with a deadpan expression. It helped tremendously to have brilliant actors assaying these roles.

As part of their interaction in the films, we highlight numerous unreal scenarios, like a burn caused by ‘a pet dragon’ who’s caught a cold or a rash caused by ‘An alien ka bachcha’ sitting on one’s lap as believable in a stark contrast to BeFit’s cashless benefits, like a cashless doctor consultation on video at 2 am or cashless blood test!

What’s your expectation from the film and how is it going to help the brand to meet your end objectives?

It has barely been a few days since we launched the films, with digital as the lead medium and I am extremely pleased to share that the films have crossed millions of views, with 90% of traffic completely organic. We have received encouraging feedback from media, industry, channel partners and customers. The campaign has been designed to refute the idea that insurance is only useful to you if you or a member of your family are hospitalized or that insurance covers only major health expenses. Through the videos, and the creatives, the myriad benefits of BeFit Cover have been highlighted.

This campaign will help to reinforce our leadership stance and image as an innovative solution provider in the insurance space. As an end objective, we are confident of driving significant consideration, preference and product trial for the brand among our key target audience.

We have made the customer journey extremely digital friendly and intuitive – be it on our flagship mobile app IL Take Care or the website with instant premium quote generation, an instant acknowledgement and connecting to a virtual RM with a video consultation in just 2 minutes of login, should the customer opt for it.

The health insurance space is very crowded. How do you plan to stand out amid the clutter? 

We have been obsessing over partnering our customers and going beyond a transactional nature of relationship as an insurance provider to transition into as their overall wellbeing partner. We have launched a slew of innovative products and features with tech led disruption and customer centricity at its heart. On Our IL Take Care App, we launched an innovative Cal Scan feature to measure calories of meals, we recently introduced the first of its kind Face Scan feature that enables monitoring of 6 health vitals in under 2 minutes with literally a facial scan, we have introduced video calling facility to assist and handhold customers and we have again close on its heels unveiled the Befit Cover cashless OPD services as a policy rider.

We believe that all these initiatives – many of them as industry first innovations – will help us break the clutter delivering on the brand promise, while using technology as the cornerstone of delivery.

Our Befit Cover offers a digitally-enabled health ecosystem that brings together more than 11,000+ doctors across cities. The pharmacy service provides express service, including delivery of medication at home within 60 minutes and lab tests at home. In addition, the solution offers 24x7 consultations (telephonic and video) by a panel of expert doctors. Finally, all of the preventative healthcare benefits such as health check-ups, risk assessments, diet & nutrition counselling, and even chat and e-counselling are available to all of the customers.

The unique product offering, coupled with clutter breaking communication, will help to create enough disruption to create a positive impact. Given the relevance of the offering, the campaign will generate enough curiosity leading to conversions.

Are you the first to launch the cashless OPD wellness benefits for your customers?

Yes. ICICI Lombard is India’s first insurance company to offer cashless OPD services to all customers – existing or new! BeFit cover covers daily health needs that do not require hospitalisation. Our customer benefits from experienced general physicians, specialists, and super-specialists online (available 24x7) or at the clinic. One can avail cashless services even for the little health hiccups, including:

  • Doctor consultations
  • Pharmacy costs
  • Lab tests
  • Routine diagnostics
  • Physiotherapy sessions
  • Diet & nutrition e-consultation
  • Minor procedures

In addition to the wellness program, customers can look forward to discounts on renewal premiums as well as access to certain deals and discounts on the IL Take Care mobile app as a reward for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

How do you plan to evaluate the campaign’s effectiveness? Has any formula been drawn up to measure the ROI from the campaign?

Befit Cover as a product is unlike any other offering currently in the market. It establishes ICICI Lombard’s intention to always pre-empt customer needs to fulfil our promise to them in line with our ethos of ‘Nibhaaye Vaade’. Not only are we keen to spread the word about BeFit Cover, but we would also like to be the first-choice of customers when they think of their health and insurance.

Through our digital-led campaign, we are confident of creating a lot of buzz over the next couple of months. We would be closely monitoring the campaign on the key metrics of brand uplift, engagement, and conversions. It is a rider policy, so we are also aware of the inherent requirements and believe we will see encouraging numbers on policy conversions. We will also closely monitor the number of unique customers downloading our IL TakeCare app. We hope to also galvanise the sales efforts across the organisation and our ecosystem of offline channels, partners & agents.

Ultimately, just like the campaign thought, we hope to have the numbers as #UnbelievableButTrue!

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