Future Generali Insurance 'stretches' one's imagination outdoor

A mechanized mobile van and a 3D looking hoarding work magic for Future Generali's new campaign

The tax-saving season is here and it brings on a deluge of insurance, mutual fund and other financial service advertising. For any brand in this space, therefore, the key is to stand out amongst the noise. Future Generali Insurance has given this a shot through innovative outdoor advertising for its new product, Future Freedom Plus.

Future Freedom Plus is a ULIP plan for customers who are looking for a convenient and economical investment-cum-insurance solution.

To communicate this, Future Generali, along with its outdoor agency OAP and creative agency Ogilvy, has launched a mass media campaign across outdoor, TV and cinema.

The strategic idea for the campaign stemmed from the fact that one of the biggest entry barriers for insurance is that it is a long-term investment product - at least 10-15 years - and customers may not want to commit their funds for such a long period.

Hence, Future Freedom Plus is designed to offer customers full freedom to customize the product as per their needs and aspirations. Customers have complete freedom to change the sum assured, premium amount and term period, as well as choose from the various investments funds.

Thus, the idea behind the campaign was 'flexibility for healthy investments'.

The outdoor advertising, in particular, has been done innovatively.

The key communication driver is that the product has flexible fund options and flexible payment terms. To convey the core idea, all the 100 billboards across 20 cities show a person in different yoga postures, thus depicting flexibility. In Mumbai, on mobile hoardings, the yoga pose or 'asana' was shown with real movement, using a partly mechanized hoarding.

Abhijit Sengupta, chief executive officer, OAP, says, "To drive a point on how to use the medium as the message, OAP created a campaign design, in which the entire billboard was shown as a flexible unit."

The unit has bent edges, as if it's curving in on one side and curving out on the other. This is actually a flat image, which has been designed to look like the hoarding has been twisted. This was done by OAP's in-house team of designers and architects.

Avinash Janjire, senior manager, brand and communication, Future Generali Insurance, tells afaqs!, "Being the tax saving season, which is when most of the buying happens in the insurance industry, it was an ideal time to come up with this campaign."

Also, discussing the focus on outdoor, he says that outdoor gives the necessary buzz value to the campaign and works best as a support medium to the TV campaign. It also has room for various innovations, which gives the brand disproportionate attention, and increases brand recall.

Janjire shares that approximately 25 per cent of their budget for the campaign was spent on outdoor.

While financial advertisers have always spent big monies on outdoor, we have to wait and watch as to who makes the loudest noise this tax season. And more innovative campaigns are sure to grab more eyeballs. As Sengupta says, "Who says you can't show an insurance product innovatively?"

Watch this space for more news and campaigns on financial advertising out-of-home...