MUMBAI: In a country where life insurance is mostly either brushed off as a retired man’s business, or drill to get over with, or at the most, an investment tool, it becomes increasingly difficult for brands in financial services category to come forth and deliver an engaging campaign that doesn’t speak of ‘returns’, ‘services’ or ‘ease of claim settlement.’ To steer away from this clutter and make a unique brand positioning, PNB Metlife has launched their new campaign LifeMienTwist, which takes a light hearted take on the otherwise sombre topic of life insurance.
Conceptualised by McCann Erickson and produced by Razorblade Films, with director Anwar Sayed behind the lense, the new campaign is digitally enhanced and rides on the success of its previous digital campaigns, #HappinessBuddy and #HealthForHappiness.
PNB MetLife India strategy marketing and products director Niraj Shah said, "The objective with this digital-only film is to try and communicate our core proposition of trying to address situations where due to uncertainties life can come to a standstill or change from here on. In our case situations could be death, deterioration of health, or milestones such as retirement. We wanted to send home the message in a manner which is not very morose or serious. We wanted to communicate it effectively but not too seriously."
Though a shift from the band's usual tone of brand communication, PNB Metlife took the decision to trial a completely different take on the treatment of the campaign after going through several consumer insights surveys and analysis. Using its social media touch points as a two way communication the brand gathered that consumers tend to engage with a serious subject like ‘life insurance’ with either heavy emotions or with laughter and fun, and are not concerned about mundane specifications and details of the product.
The #LifeMeinTwist film opens with a couple and their son walking around in a street fair and their son drags them to watch a local magic show. The magician tries to attract a larger crowd by claiming to showcase his magical prowess of transforming a human being into a pigeon and subsequently turning it back. The magician’s assistant, who is a young boy, drags the reluctant man as a volunteer. The magician transforms the man into a pigeon. Unfortunately due to a background noise of balloon bursting, the pigeon flies off before the magician can transform him again. The film ends with a message that anything can happen in life at any time and it always better to be prepared.
Through this film, the brand wants consumers to recognize the need for insurance to protect themselves and their families as ‘anything can happen in life’. While consumers are aware of this, they don’t want to even think that something unfortunate can happen to them.
Keeping that in mind the phrase, ‘Life Mein Twist’ was singled out as the campaign message as it easy to relate to in a general situation, without preaching of preparedness for sudden death or accidents.
Staying in tune with its core marketing strategy, for this campaign as well the brand has taken a digital first approach. Needless to say the bulk of the campaign’s marketing budget is also inclined heavily towards digital.
On the digital only approach, Shah added, "We consciously tried to look at changing preferences of our consumer base of today and tomorrow. A lot of people are approaching viewership in a different way. If we look at data, a third of our population is already using the internet. We wanted to test our hypothesis and roll out a digital-only campaign and check our reach. We’ve done this in the past too, and the feedback we received was good. Digital allows instant feedback which allows us to react to it quicker and then put in a response."
The campaign will be first rolled out digitally followed by a spot on television, though the brand will follow up with regular consumer engagement activities on social media based on this campaign.
