Aegon Religare informs and impresses with KILB campaign

It ranked among the top searches on Google last week. Innumerable blogs discussed it. No one was sure if it was a disease or a sitcom, but one thing was for sure, anyone could get KILB.

Aegon Religare has launched its first campaign since the joint venture was announced in 2007. The campaign has been created by Contract Advertising. And the fun thing was that you didn't have a clue that the billboard and TV teaser was for Aegon Religare Life Insurance. The teaser, which included three 10 second TV commercials, relied more on outdoor and tickers on news channels.

The outdoor activity comprised billboards and bus shelters in about 22 cities all over India. It showed actor Irrfan Khan in a doctor's uniform, and the accompanying copy said, “Kya aapko KILB hai?” (“Do you have KILB?”) Similar hoardings with different body copy were put up across the nation in the pan-India teaser campaign. The campaign is expected to move to other cities, too.

One of the TVCs had Khan helping a patient into a chair, saying that KILB doesn't spread by touch. The TVC ends with Khan asking once again, “Kya aapko KILB hai?”

The buzz created by KILB caught the interest of the online and offline community. It created a sensation among people, fuelled by the similarity of the KILB acronym to SARS and AIDS and Khan’s medico attire. The curiosity the ads created was similar to that evoked by the Balbir Pasha (AIDS) and Digen Varma (Frooti) ads in the past.

But it is a known fact that a teaser-revealer ad is a risky business. Frooti's Digen Varma campaign is a stark example of a teaser building up hype and the revealer not living up to the raised expectations. But Pandey is confident and says that it is Aegon Religare's responsibility to ensure that the idea works.

The revealer ad was released on August 8. KILB means Kum Insurance Lene ki Bimari. Aegon Religare’s aim was to highlight the fact that most people do not know how much they are worth while buying insurance for themselves.

The revealer has two 45 second TVCs. One is shot in a railway compartment. Khan, who has been roped in as brand ambassador, is in the compartment. On seeing a KILB ad, one of the passengers thinks out aloud, “What is KILB?” A discussion ensues, with Khan telling the passengers that all of them are victims of KILB.

The second TVC is in a lift which gets stuck midway. If the people inside don't get help in time, all of them could die. Here, too, a discussion follows and the passengers in the lift learn that being underinsured is as good as being uninsured.

At the end of each TVC, a toll free number is flashed so that one can call and find out the required value of one’s insurance. The Balbir Pasha campaign, too, featured a helpline number.

The insight that most people underinsure themselves came after a large research study undertaken by Aegon Religare. The research revealed that though people were aware of the premium that they paid, they didn't know that there was a measurement system in place to deduce how much one needs to be insured for.

“Only 13 per cent of SEC A, B and C are insured, of which approximately 80 per cent are underinsured,” explains Pandey.

“We've purposely used visuals that remind one of the HIV/AIDS ad done by Shabana Azmi, so the thought that comes to mind is that KILB is a disease,” says Raghu Bhat, vice-president and executive director, Contract Advertising.

Extensive outdoor is part of the revealer. Bhat shares that viral and video games are also part of the media plan. The video game reinforces the message that once you're adequately insured, nothing will happen to you.

Aegon Religare's target group is males aged 25-44, SEC A and B.

Wallstreet, the OOH division of Bates 141, is responsible for all the outdoor placements in India. Aegon Religare's media agency is Mediacom.