Aegon Religare says 'there is a star in every child'

Televisionpoint.com Correspondent | Mumbai
The company which has launched the innovative 'Kya aapko KILB hai?' campaign last year and a Pension Plan television commercial (TVC) featuring actor Irfan Khan is back with an new 'intelligent' campaign.

Aegon Religare Life Insurance, one of the newest entrants in the life insurance market, has launched an advertising campaign on their Star Child Plan. The positioning statement of the campaign is 'There is a star in every child'. It has been conceptualised by Raghu Bhatt and Manish Bhatt of Contract Advertising, post-production is done by VHQ (Singapore) and is directed by Old School Films.

The soccer TVC

The insurance company has launched three creatives for the Star Child Plan. First being the soccer TVC, which broke across major channels on August 29. The other two are in the zone of music and food and are scheduled to be released on September 7 and September 14, respectively.

The execution of campaign is unique and is bound to interest the consumer and make him notice it. The campaign is on air for six weeks and spans various media platforms, with a marketing budget of Rs 8 crore. The media mix includes television as a lead medium; while outdoor across 42 cities, a print campaign, Internet and a micro site are also used for the promotions.

The soccer TVC begins with an 18 month old baby shown to make cool moves with a football, to background music. The voice-over then tells the viewers, that parents want to make their child a footballer, then why not invest in its future with Religare's Star Child Plans?

Pradeep Pandey

Speaking to Televisionpoint.com, Pradeep Pandey, director, branding and communications, Aegon Religare Life Insurance, explains that the brief for this campaign was to capture the thinking of today's young parents, who want their kids to take the profession, which the kids excel in rather than forcing a profession.

"Our aim was to release a clutter-breaking communication capturing the emotions of middle class Indian father. Today's parent sees his/her role more as financial enabler, rather than decider. Our second objective was to have a film which sets itself apart form the clutter by way of execution too. We would want to build high brand saliency through this campaign." he says.

Pandey informs that experts from six countries including France, China and Singapore have worked on this campaign. Real babies were photographed in total detail, using that information; grayscale babies were created and were then animated to replicate complex actions.

Then, these actions were imbued with 'babyishness' because babies can't be too certain and definitive in their moments. The skin and expressions were grafted in the end and the whole thing lasted for about three months.

Pandey opines that the company does its marketing intelligently for a high brand recall power. He says the Star Child Plan has already received tremendous positive response by word-of-mouth marketing and a final performance of the campaign can be measured by the end of this month only, when the actual sales lead figures pour in.

He also gives the the example of 'Kya aapko KILB hai?' campaign, which created a mark in the cluttered life insurance category. As a late entrant, the brand had to come up with a high-impact campaign, which has generated more than 50,000 calls.

Importantly, the data revealed by AdEx shows that TV advertising alone by the insurance sector has increased by a 28 per cent during the quarter ending June 2009. The mantra adopted by the marketing honchos of these insurance companies is simple - to lure consumers to buy their insurance products with either negative or positive reinforcements.

For the record, Religare, the financial arm of Ranbaxy, owns 44 per cent in Aegon Religare Life, while Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd (through Times Private Treaties) owns 30 per cent and the Dutch financial group Aegon owns rest 26 per cent.

In its first year of business, the company has sold 23,000 policies and collected Rs 46.3 crore in premium. The company now plans to focus on building its distribution channels and adds another 10,000 agents and up to 300 sales staff.