Seen the latest SBI campaign? On TV is Chimanlal Charlie and others who have lost bets. Because they did not believe that SBI actually provided the services they heard about. For instance, the third TVC, titled ‘Papad’, has a man rolling out ‘papads’ at home, while his wife watches. His sin was that he disbelieved the fact that the SBI offers home loans that cover moving-in costs.
And on the road are hoardings asking the audience a *bet you didn’t know this about SBI* question. With the answer Surprisingly SBI.
Humour and financial advertising? Potential disaster. But the ads are actually quite funny and manage first level attention grabbing. Full marks for the execution.
But every time see any ads from this campaign, I think – why so much defensiveness? Why surprisingly? It is a well known fact that SBI is the largest bank in India; sure many other services offered by the bank are not as well known, but why would the bank want to scream out that the consumer ought to be surprised by these? In case the idea is to target the young, moneyed, MNC bank-friendly customer, then what happens to the old loyal customers of SBI? Those who always knew. And for whom all this is not surprising?
As for the potential slippery customer, the ads seem to do even less. When I see the ads, I smile, I wonder. And then walk away. Without any intentions of ever banking with SBI.
In this agencyfaqs interview, O&M says that the insight behind the campaign was disbelief. But when disbelief gets translated into diffidence, it can be a PR disaster. As this campaign seems to me.
Update : I had posted this on mediamusings a while ago. After I wrote this, I saw the SBI ads on television a couple of times. And I found them suprisingly good. See, that word again. They are funny, they clearly convey the benefit and most importantly, they are not defensive in the manner of the hoardings…
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The other thing is the SBI life insurance ad. The one with the two old women going to meet their brother on his birthday, plotting and planning and giggling away like a couple of college kids all the way… And the look of absolute delight on Chhotu’s face, mirrored by the look on his sisters’. Except “Chhotu” is as old as they are… I loved it.
Each time I watch the ad, I wait for the ending. I smile and generally feel happy. An ad for life insurance that talks about life and not death. Great.
Except for this niggling thought. An ad targetted at young people, showing old people and their lives and the promise of a very distant happy future… Feel good, super. Identification, zilch. When you are young and enjoying that heady feeling of “immortality”, how well would such advertising work? For that matter, I wonder about what kind of advertising would work with the target audience for life insurance products?
Would you buy a financial product, especially life insurance, based on an ad that made you feel good? Does emotional appeal work in case of such “rational” products? I am not nitpicking here, just wondering aloud… Traditionalists would argue that for a rational category like financial products and services, advertising needs to be equally rational and informative; more and more we see advertising with humour or emotional appeal in categories which were not earlier considered feel-good-worthy… What do you think – or feel – about this?
Charu, I know nothing about finance or advertising, but since you asked – I bought my only life insurance policy because a friend was selling it – she needed to meet her targets 🙂
i don’t believe in life insurance, per se, because of the whole ‘feeding off our fears’ funda. any amount of insurance doesn’t compensate people for loss and i will never be able to put aside enough to enable a family/dependents to survive, even in the short term.
on the oher hand, I have considered investing in pension plans and i suppose feel-good advertising plays a part there. i like the SBI insurance ads. also, that ad for a pension/retirement fund where the guy is day-dreaming, saying he’s not going to retire from life. “main retire hounga sirf apne kaam se”… but of course, when it comes to actually buying a product, one would have to check on competitive products from other firms.
Does emotional appeal work in case of such “rational†products?
I hate to admit, but apparently it works! Almost all insurance products have an emotional appeal. Rather these products have only emotional appeal. One can tear apart all the claims with a little analysis. Term insurance is the best life insurance product and nobody, I mean nobody, will tell you to buy it.
Coming back to original topic, yes, the emotional appeal makes a compelling reason for people to think of buying the product as penetration of these products is extremely low. When awareness creation is the only goal, why throw some factual data in the ad and make it uninteresting?
If not for emotional appeal, why would ICICI choose Shahrukh Khan as brand ambassador?
Personally, I give a damn to the “brand creation” of financial products through advertising. Will SRK close all his accounts with other banks and bank only with ICICI? Slim chance!
i agree with you totally on the ill thought out cue’surprisingly’. i’ve been thinking a lot about the campaign ever since it went on air and i can find only one logical reason for the idea behind the campaign : that there was none. this is a familiar trick played by some big indian agencies who when faced with an account( 1. the client 2.the audience-especially those who inhabit the vast wilderness outside south mumbai) they don’t fully understand( or try to understand) ): fall back on any of the three well-worn formats that seem to get attention in india : sex, humour and celebrities. they do get the attention, given the the fact that big agencies always manage to corner big-spend accounts, but this doesn’t usually translate into ‘converts’.
we all know sbi is the no.1 bank in india and we can safely assume that most mnc-bank loving customers too are aware of the fact..so what was the campaign trying to convey ? if it wanted to increase its popularity among the mnc customers, the ads don’t project sbi as a smart bank, only as a large bank (once again). and the media mix is terribly wrong if the target audience was the smart-set.
as for the humour part it was too stretched out- the punch comes in too late and seems contrived.
this is another instance of a large, but lazy , agency hoodwinking a large, and again lazy, public sector client into spending a needlessly large amount of money on a bad campaign.
all the research etc., that reportedly go into these kind of campaigns ,in my view, happens only after the campaign accidentally succeeds.. you’d have to explain yourself after the ‘success’ to people who’d like to know how did you think of ‘such a great campaign’, right?
and i disagree with shashikant that insurance products have only emotional appeal.. ‘Will SRK close all his accounts with other banks and bank only with ICICI? Slim chance..’ thinking ‘rationally’ he wouldn’t. isn’t that the right answer ?
Charu,
I think the advertisement simply wanted to reflect the mindset of the present mnc generation. Believe me, I’ve been part of SBI family all my life, my dad and my grand fathers and all my uncles have all been and still are SBI employees. And you may laugh at this, but I was quite “surprised” when I came to know about their ATM network, or the kind of loans they were offering which are as competent as any other bank in the market today. In your opinion, their cue “surprisingly” may be defensive but for a person like me it was simply what I felt when they laid their cards on the table. I would love to know if you have any data or just anything that says their campaign didnt work.
Annie, personally I have taken life insurance as a tax saving measure 🙂 but I know what you mean about feeding off people’s fears and uncertainty, but isn;t all advertising essentially about that? I have been watching and I like this shift from death to life in the life insurance advertising space…
Shashiknt, I agree that emotional appeals make you feel good, but I think in case of a product like insurnce, people are likely to choose a brand / product for the benefits – after thought and analysis – and not because the ad promised them a rosy future in very vague terms…
kuffir, agree with you completely… especially since you have agreed with what I say here :))
but I think there was some good idea there lurking underneath that got lost in the execution…
Krishna, I think I was looking at it very “professionally”, thinking not of myself as a customer but as a researcher 🙂 sure, many of the facts they present in the ads surprised me, but I thought their tone was too defensive, more in the hoardings…
hi all,
no doubt this is a excellent ad………bt can anyone let me know which ad agency in involved in advertisong of SBI life insurance ad in which a old man gives a diamond ring to his wife……….
please let me know