NEW DELHI: In a country where insurance penetration is abysmally low, the business opportunities related to the domain are manifold. The moot point is, how the insurance proposition is to be put across to the potential customers. Leading private insurer Future Generali Life Insurance has always had a way with communicating this message effectively, especially in the outdoor, along with its OOH partner OAP.
The insurance major has now come up with yet another impactful, innovative outdoor campaign executed by OAP and complemented by a powerful onground activity managed by marketing services agency G2rams. The company launched an ‘Insurance Week’ beginning January 29 whereby onground activities were initiated at 105 Big Bazaar outlets.
At these outlets, volunteers impressed upon the visitors of the need for insurance and encouraged them to sign pledge cards as well as white balloons that were to be all strung together to make the world’s largest chain of balloons.
The outdoor campaign is essentially an extension of the TVC that effectively communicates that the family bread-winner needs to ensure the financial security of his family during and after his life.
The light-hearted handling of this hard-hitting message on the hoardings seems to have cut ice with the audience.
 Talking about the objective of the initiative and campaign, Kishore Biyani, group chief executive officer, Future Group, said, “Given the alarmingly low insurance penetration in India, if the ‘Insurance Week’ could make a small tangible difference to the way we as Indians perceive insurance, I believe we would have made a huge brand leadership statement with tangible, long-term impact.
This is a leadership stance taken by Future Generali and will surely help grow the overall industry, benefitting all concerned – customers, agents, distributors and insurers.”
Biyani also said, “There is a crying need for the insurance industry to create a movement to increase awareness and change the perception of the need for insurance, to shake people out of their inertia and create an occasion for buying, considering and re-evaluating their insurance needs every year to keep pace with growing responsibilities and needs. This has never been attempted in our country and we thought we were best poised to do this with over 2 crore retail customers walking into our Big Bazaars, annually.”
 Deepak Sood, MD and CEO, Future Generali India Life Insurance Company, said, “One of the biggest hurdles facing insurance in India is the general perception that life insurance offers
only complex products which are difficult to understand leading to the inertia. To tackle this barrier, we have launched an easy-to-understand insurance plan called Future Generali Select Insurance Plan wherein one needs to invest as little as Rs 1,500 a month to ensure both insurance protection as well as smart investment that grows till maturity. To make it suitable to the retail format, we have created Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,000 SIP boxes which can be picked (like any other FMCG product) across the counter at any Big Bazaar.
With this, for the first time, we have given a touch and feel factor to insurance making it even more interesting and involving for the customer.”
The three-week plus outdoor campaign has been rolled out in 40 cities which include major and mini metros like Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata.
 Commenting on the potential market, Avinash Janjire, senior manager brand and communication, Future Generali India Life Insurance, said insurance penetration in India is a mere 4.6 percent.
In terms of insurance density, the numbers are even more alarming; insurance penetration in developed nations like the US is 33 times that of India; in the UK it is 73 times that of India and Japan 65 times. “Therefore, it was important to create awareness about insurance in India. The campaign is not a mere advertising campaign but goes beyond communication. With the radical innovations, arguably for the first time it involves and engages the
consumers by making them a part of the campaign, encouraging them to sign a balloon as a symbol of pledging to insure and secure their families' future,
” he said.
“With a hard hitting message, the very act of signing up should shake them out of their inertia towards insurance, prodding them to actively consider insurance in the near future if not immediately,” said Janjire.
Talking about the execution of the campaign, Abhijit Sengupta, CEO, OAP, said, “We are now constantly trying to bring in freshness in each of our campaigns.  On one side is our expertise on media planning in which OAP has invested in various tools or data like TGI, IOS, iLap and our own models. This helps us churn impeccable planning. If you see the spend levels of OAP clients you will notice we manage equivalent amount of awareness build-up with lesser budget.
We are very conscious about controlling wastage. On the other side is the creative approach. We have managed a whole lot of innovations for many recent campaigns but without burning a hole in the client’s pockets.”
“When we received that artwork we figured out that we can create a wow by showing a massive house being put up on the site. Otherwise the main creative had only a wall of a house from which the protagonist is seen coming out.
This was not easy both logistically as well as in the pocket to do such massive installations. But at OAP we have the expertise to create 3D with 2D. And that's what we did. If you pass by any such site, you won't be able to figure out whether it is a real house being constructed on a billboard or it is fake,” he added.
As a part of the innovation, the agency also installed a giant cutout of the man (troubled soul) holding the balloon at a Mahim Causeway Billboard.
Since the outdoor campaign is an extension of the TV, the main objective was to keep the awareness level high or increase. Therefore outdoor came in weeks after the TV launch. The agency chose primarily large formats to support the creative. The other media formats used include bqs, bus side and back panels, gantries, wall wraps, tricycles and Metro station and inside metro branding and public utilities.
The innovations have created the ‘wow’ effect among the target audience whereas the onground activation gathered close to 10 lakh pledges from potential insurance customers during the balloon and pledge card signature campaign at Big Bazaar outlets.
 Speaking about the challenges faced while executing the onground activity, Rachna Khanna, vice-president and branch head, G2rams, Mumbai, said, “The response from the activity was excellent. This was a manpower intensive project where we had to deal with 300 volunteers who were trained to communicate with the customers and convince them to sign balloons and pledge cards at Big Bazaar outlets across India. Thereafter, doing the analysis of the responses from each outlet was another major task.”
Khanna added, “We had to showcase to the consumers that this activity was worth the while to participate in. Hence, we decided to collect all the balloons at the end of the ‘Insurance Week’ and inflate them and have threaded them into a single chain. This will be the longest balloon chain in the world, earning Future Generali, Big Bazaar and our team, a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.”
Janjire added, “We are attempting for the Guinness Record for the longest balloon chain in the world, the length of which could be anything above 18 km.”
The campaign reaffirms the critical role of the outdoor medium in enhancing Future Generali’s Life Insurance Company’s steady expansion in India.
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