I actually do reverse warehouse and reduce my expenses during festivals: Abhishek Gupta

Adgully’s AG Talk brings unfiltered insights and thoughts of CEOs, MDs, and CMOs, who have been leading the marketing landscape, and in fact, also laying the ground rules to keep up with the transformative times.

India’s life insurance industry is undergoing a paradigm shift, with companies adapting to meet the evolving needs of customers in a more personalized and meaningful way. Edelweiss Life Insurance stands out as a frontrunner, not just through its rebranding, but by staying true to its core mission – protecting the dreams and aspirations of its customers. In a crowded and often fear-driven market, Edelweiss has carved a unique space by focusing on positive, empowering narratives, particularly through its women-centric approach. With a vision anchored in genuine customer care and innovation, the company is redefining what it means to offer protection in today’s financial landscape.

In an exclusive Ag Talk interaction with Adgully, Abhishek Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer, Edelweiss Life Insurance, speaks at length about the strategic thinking behind the company’s forward momentum. He provides deep insights into how the rebranding complements their long-standing purpose and how their marketing, branding, and advertising efforts are designed to close the gap between aspirations and reality. Gupta also highlights the company’s deliberate move away from traditional fear-based insurance messaging and how they’re tapping into underrepresented narratives to create lasting impact, especially during key seasons like Diwali.

Post the rebranding, what is the core vision driving Edelweiss Life Insurance ahead?

It is just rebranding. The vision does not change, the purpose does not change. The reason that we exist still remains the same and that is protecting the dreams and aspirations of our customers. So, that does not change. We are into this business because this business means protection, protection against any eventuality, so that the dreams and aspirations can always remain protected. So, that has been our guiding philosophy. That is our north star.

How is this vision getting reflected in the marketing, branding and advertising strategies of Edelweiss Life Insurance?

Once you have to protect the dreams and aspirations, it is important to understand what is actually stopping from this protection. One thing that we have clearly identified through our research is that everybody always has aspirations in their lives, and to meet these aspirations, we always have certain means that are available with this. The good point or the bad point about this is that there is always a gap between what I want and what I have. The aspirations are always higher and the means are always lower. We tell our customers, our partners, our employees that we will through our products and services help you to reduce this gap.

How does Edelweiss Life Insurance’s approach to communication differ from other BFSI brands that heavily rely on celebrity endorsements, particularly in light of government regulations concerning influencer involvement in the sector?

What we believe is that every product or service that we offer to our customers must be based on identification of a proper need. If you see insurance as a category, the product that we sell actually offers the customer’s family a certain amount in case the customer is not around. So, the entire industry has been selling it on the basis of fear. We decided at the beginning of our journey that the conversation about insurance doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to talk about negative things, especially death. And so consciously we stay away from negative kinds of communication. What we try to talk about has been a differentiating factor for us. The entire industry talks to males because males are the primary consumers. More than 80% of the policies, even our data shows, are bought by males, while only 20% are bought by females. We actually always have women as a protagonist in our communication, because while women might not be buyers of the policy, they are actually playing a huge role in influencing. Close to one-third of advisors are women. We actually have a scenario where women are selling insurance. If women are selling insurance, why should I not talk to consumers as a woman has been our focus area in our communication? That has really helped us to create a differentiation in this heavily cluttered industry.

As far as influencers are concerned, the normal tendency is to take some influencer and do something around them. We look at it a little differently. What we look at is what is my business objective. If my business objective gets served by getting an influencer or a celebrity, then we will get an influence on the celebrity. It’s not the other way around. And I’m not talking about just celebrities, even influencers, macro influencers, micro influencers. They need to serve a purpose. Unless and until I define those purposes very well and why I’m getting them, it just becomes a lip service. You can get eyeballs, but you will not get recall. Therefore, celebrities need to fit with the purpose, that is the first priority. The second priority is the values of the organization. And number three, obviously creates a distinct kind of communication. If you have these three, I think that is a potent mix.

The role of women protagonists in your brand stories has been highlighted. Why do women-centric narratives matter to Edelweiss Life Insurance?

One, this industry is heavily dependent on the sellers. More than 90% of sales across the industry happen when there is a seller in between the customer and the insurer. If I just look at individual agents across the industry – and I’m saying almost one-third of the agents are women – that means we have a fair bit of people who are actually women who are selling insurance. We have also observed that the women sellers, especially housewives, are comparatively better sellers than other sellers. Number one is because they sell insurance the way it is to be sold – by first identifying the need and then properly selling it. Number two is they are extremely loyal to the organization that they work with. Number three is women always create a lot more other woman entrepreneurs, not just herself, and inspire a lot other women to do so. 20 per cent of the buyers of policies are women.

Number three is of the 80% males who are buying insurance, a lot of their decision is done in consultation with the woman of the house. And women play a huge influencer role. Number four is, nobody in the insurance industry was talking to women. If I put all of these four things together, I think suddenly it becomes a no-brainer of why you should make women the center of your communication. It has worked for us.

The reason it has worked for us is, first, in all the research that we do in terms of brand track, we come across as a progressive organization that really helps us to bring the progressive part of the organization out. Secondly, even in our internal studies or research with our employees, women see this as a place to work for and something that they actually would like to continue in building their careers in. Thirdly, it has really helped us to create clutter-breaking communication from time to time.

What are your observations on the overall consumer and market sentiment during the festive season this year?

Overall festive season, and especially Diwali, is the time when consumer spending is at its peak. It is at the time when consumers like to spend on categories which are kind of discretionary in nature. And it is a time when there’s a lot of positivity, festivity, and joy around in the air. As a marketer, I look at Diwali as a very opportune time to talk to customers. But if I look at it as a marketer for an insurance product, my views are slightly different. My views are different because a festival is not a time when somebody decides to buy insurance. So, our sales do not get impacted by festivals at all. Our sales actually are not dependent on a festival. As a marketer, I actually do the reverse warehouse. I will go ahead and reduce my expenses during festivals, because there’s a lot of clutter. There’s a clutter of consumer brands and other brands which consumers are buying during this time.

What is your marketing/ advertising budget for the festive season in 2024? What percentage increase (or decrease) is it compared to the previous year?

Well, I cannot talk about the budget in absolute terms. I would actually like to stay away from this clutter and not talk and advertise during this point of time, during festival times. And once the festival gets over and things get decluttered, that is when I come back again. Moreover, I get media at good rates in non-festival times as compared to festival times. We don’t spend overall on a yearly basis. Our spending is in line with our increase in business growth. Our business growth is around 14-15% per annum. That’s what we are growing at. So, budgets also keep on increasing accordingly.

Given the increasing fragmentation of media consumption, how are you allocating ad budgets across different platforms?

As I said earlier, we don’t spend in the festival season. From a non-festive point of view, we actually go with a proper mix including Digital, TV, Outdoor, and Radio. We normally don’t do print. However, the ratio keeps on changing from year to year, depending upon what our objective for the year is, or whether it is a brand campaign, or whether it is a product-specific campaign. So, it keeps on changing every year.

What strategies does Edelweiss Life Insurance plan to implement to grow its market share in the coming years? How will these strategies adapt to evolving consumer needs and competitive pressures?

The consumers are getting evolved. That means that today’s consumers don’t like a service which has been designed for a whole lot of segments while consuming just one part of the segment. This is an era of personalization. While it is very difficult to personalize a financial product, especially an insurance product, we are trying to create a lot of personalization. Hence, we have invested heavily in creating tools by which customers can personalize what they want and we can offer it to the customer advisory tools that we have designed in-house.

The second theme is focusing on consumer experience. If you look at the insurance category, typically a customer does not interact with us frequently. Once you buy a product with us, you have to interact with us only when the renewal is done, which most of the time is once in a year or probably quarterly. Therefore, interaction opportunities with our customers are fairly limited. So, our first endeavour is to make those interactions as frictionless as possible. Second is to create opportunities, where I can go back to the customer and talk to them about how their policy is doing. This way, you continue being in touch with the customer so that you can offer an experience to him/her. So, when the next time the customer has to buy a policy, you are one in the consideration set.

The third strategy is, what I call, micro segments. India has a lot of micro segments; you might actually have a segment of self-employed people. Thus, there are opportunities to create products specifically for one segment and offer it only to that segment and not to other segments. We are exploring a lot of those. So, micro-segmentation is the third pillar of our strategy.

The fourth pillar is the distributors, who form a very important part of our ecosystem. So, while consumer experience is important to us, offering a superior distributor experience is also important to us, because like consumers have a choice to take any one of the 25 life insurance companies, the distributor also has a choice. And we have to ensure that we remain the preferred choice of our distributor partners as well. So, we spend a lot of time with our distributors to understand them, know what their problems are, and create solutions for them. Treat distributors like your customers so that you are able to create solutions.