What Pankaj Gupta teaches about brand purpose

Most of our campaigns are very well recognized. They are thematically linked and instantly recognizable. And that has helped us differentiate ourselves from the rest of the industry. Purchase learning for consumers mostly start on digital leases. How do you ensure that it also ends on digital and the consumer buy the products on the medium itself? Customers are more and more digitally savvy today. Now as a consequence of that, they try and get information about any product from multiple sources.

And digital is obviously one of the easiest places to start. Now what has happened is while the information about many of the products is available on the digital medium, the transaction flow, the way it can be made simpler for the customer has not kept pace. Typically what many players have done is whatever is the physical journey of the customer on a certain product line, the same is translated into the digital medium without accounting for what simplicity is possible in that medium. The digital consumer is far more simplicity oriented.

They are looking for a purchase experience which is far simpler, which is intuitive and which is in line with what they have used to or what they have got used to in other channels like let us say when they are looking for a mobility solution or an e-commerce solution. In the financial services space that has not kept pace. My belief is that as we evolve further and we are able to make the customer journeys far more simpler and intuitive, not only the purchase discovery but also the termination of the entire

purchase process would start happening more and more on the digital platforms. Pankaj, HDFC enjoys a very good brand recall. How do you ensure that your brand positioning is different from other players given that there are 20 to 25 private players in the insurance sector? That is a very good question. One of the things that we have done is that we have maintained a lot of consistency in our communication. Like Saru Uthake Geo is one of the most well recognized tagline in the live insurance space.

Another thing that we do is that whatever interpretation we have to take about any business situation or a business problem or any customer segments need, we link it back to the Saru Uthake Geo theme. For example, pride is one of the theme that we have picked up. The latest campaign that we have picked up talks about bounce back. In some way both of those themes link back to Saru Uthake Geo. The meaning of Saru Uthake Geo can be different for different people at different life stages but the interpretation has to be very very consistent.

This consistency is what I would say has helped us maintain a definite edge in the industry. Most of our campaigns are very well recognized. They are thematically linked and instantly recognizable. And that has helped us differentiate ourselves from the rest of the industry. There is a huge problem with financial product segment. That is that consumers are not really aware what to do, what to buy, where to buy, all these things. What role does branded content play in reaching out to consumers, making them more aware and

by the end of it, they end up being your consumers? Financial products in general and life insurance products in particular are more complicated than a normal product. And they are also a high involvement decision, completely normal product that you might be buying on a more regular basis. Another thing about financial products, particularly life insurance is that you probably buy this product twice, thrice in your lifetime. So your ability to research about the product and become a master of the product in terms of

knowing what the product will do for you is limited. In that context, the branded marketing helps us solve or rather talk about how the product solve the customer's problem and communicate to them through individuals in a more authentic manner. For example, if you look at our past campaigns about Liar Mirror, we talked about the need for health insurance in our country. And how because people see themselves as healthy and fit, they do not really feel the urgency of buying health insurance.

And the inertia that holds back the customer in a way holds back the industry and doesn't solve the problem that it could solve for the end customer. So we took two real life survivors of health situation, Lisa Ray and Suresh Menon. Lisa Ray has survived cancer. Suresh Menon has survived a hard situation. We created branded content around Vistu and that helped us approach the customer's situation in a very authentic manner with spokespeople who were really recognizable. Another thing that we did in branded content was our young and responsible campaigns.

We have had two series of those campaigns by now. We realized that younger audiences were an underexplored opportunity within life insurance. Now the product requirements, the solution experiences that the customers need is different. The positioning about the product that they need is also different. Our insight for that segment was that while many segments of the population have the belief that the younger customers or the younger population is not as responsible as the older generations.

In point of fact, the younger generation today is highly ambitious, highly focused, highly disciplined, highly driven. And that communication peg of young and responsible helped us reach out to that audience in a manner which resonated with them. And we had almost a viral campaign on social media when we came out with this campaign. Many people talking about and tagging their friends that okay have a look at this campaign, what it talks about, this is what we feel. So it touched the heart of the customer.

The branded content helped us again position our product in the lives of our potential customers in a very meaningful way. Insurance is a very tough category. What do you do to unwind after work? So I am of the firm belief that being business focused and having a work-life balance are both possible at the same time. My way of unwinding after work is to spend time with my family. So my wife and my two kids, I have a teenage daughter, I have a son who is almost 11 years old.

They come to me with so much of perspective and so much of wisdom that it helps me become intellectually alive again after a tough working day which 10-12 hours in the office. And that makes me excited about exploring different perspective that they bring. So they talk to me about anything and everything under the sun and their views and perspectives are so different that they help me recharge by the sheer excitement of their conversation. So I will be happy to see you in the next one. Thank you. Thank you.