Pritika Shah explains why HDFC Life’s digital campaigns revolve around younger audiences

At a time when insurance brands are racing to stay relevant in a fragmented, digital-first India, HDFC Life is reshaping its marketing playbook with a blend of insight-driven storytelling, grassroots financial education, and sharply targeted campaigns. From school programmes that decode the basics of money to digital content crafted in Gen Z lingo, the insurer is widening its lens to build deeper, more personalised connections across life stages and geographies. 

Pritika Shah, Head of Marketing at HDFC Life, shares how the brand keeps its trusted legacy fresh through regional nuance, cultural relevance, and purpose-led narratives, all while balancing brand building, performance, influencers, and new-age media to meet a rapidly evolving consumer.

Edited excerpts:

Financial literacy is still a challenge in India. What role does marketing play in educating consumers beyond just selling policies?

Consumer understanding and simplification are key to our marketing efforts, owing to the complex nature of our category. 

So, our efforts start at the grassroot-level with school contact programs where we engage the school students on basics of finance. Further, we engage the college students via knowledge sessions, case study competitions etc to educate them about the importance of finances and related planning. Moreover, we educate consumers across life stages right from when they take up their first job/business to starting a family and eventually, planning for retirement. 

This is achieved through a host of online and offline initiatives including but not limited to social media engagements, webinars, podcasts, direct marketing initiatives, on-ground activations, PR initiatives etc.

HDFC Life is one of the most trusted names in the insurance sector. How do you ensure your marketing stays fresh while continuing to build on that trust?

Sar utha ke jiyo! – is not only our core brand promise but also our north star. Therefore, our communication strategy has always revolved around finding newer ways of communicating our core promise to customers. As a brand, we are about enabling the financial independence of our consumers, ensuring they live a life of pride.

Our approach to remain relevant has been driven by finding current themes and driving our communications around them across all our efforts. This essentially helps us identify conversations that are on-going in our consumers lives and build our campaigns around them.

For our first-ever regional campaign in the Southern states, research studies showed that financial planning for child’s education is a key trigger for Life Insurance purchase, hence, the campaign drew a parallel to this and highlighted the importance of ‘preparation to achieve Centum/100% in life’. However, when we tested the same insight in the Eastern states, we uncovered distinct differences in mindset towards financial planning, priorities, and life insurance. Maintaining one’s lifestyle featured as a top financial goal, which was captured in our campaign through life lessons, highlighting the importance of financial preparedness.

Among other examples – Our brand campaign launched in Jan 2024, the core insight was based on the struggles of parents of today’s youngsters who are living in the digital age - with numerous choices and options available, it necessitates that they are adequately planned financially to support their children’s dreams.

In a low-involvement category like insurance, what has been your most effective approach to drive relevance and awareness among consumers?

Having a sharply-focused approach and ensuring a strong insight-based strategy has helped us create some of our most effective campaigns.

Consistent research studies have helped us understand the pulse of consumers across different consumer segments such as working women, self-employed, younger audiences etc and across geographies (key Eastern & Southern states, lower tiers, etc) to drive deeper connect with our consumers.

Our media efforts are also tailored basis our overall objective and defined TG. Our strategy comprises multiple engagement efforts, not only for our existing and prospective customers but also our partners and key stakeholders from time to time. 

With millennials and Gen Z increasingly entering the insurance buying category, how are you adapting your campaigns to resonate with them?

At HDFC Life, we consistently look at identifying new audience segments and this is when ‘first-jobbers’ was taken up as a focus segment.

As we continued our research studies, we have observed stark differences in consumer outlook towards insurance based on their life stage. So, our communications strategies were also aligned on that basis.

Currently, all our digital and social campaigns are primarily centered around the younger TG, with focus on building a connect through the lingo, themes and formats that appeal to them.

We have rolled out multiple programmes targeting them – From the KlarifyLife, a digital education and awareness initiative to simplify life insurance aimed at driving Term Insurance especially amongst the younger TG, to “Life Insurance 101" featuring popular comedian Aakash Gupta, a digital series was aimed at dispelling common misconceptions and educating them through humour. 

Do you divide spends between brand building, digital performance campaigns, and purpose-driven initiatives?

Our annual spends are planned in line with the organizational goals and focus areas.

While focus on brand building will remain, we will continue our initiatives to drive brand and business across digital and other campaigns.

How has your media mix evolved over the years, especially with the rise of OTT, short-form content, and regional platforms?

For some of our key campaigns, we look at a multimedia approach, which includes traditional and new-age media. Over the years, our spend on Digital, OTT and especially connected TV has increased, keeping up with changing consumption patterns. 

For other segment-based campaigns such as Gen Z, Women, etc we focus primarily on digital and social media as key mediums. On social media, our focus on influencer marketing has also increased, along with new formats such as shorts, reels, podcasts, etc.

Do you see influencer marketing and partnerships as meaningful tools in building trust for an insurance brand, or do you rely more on traditional storytelling?

We view influencer marketing as an effective way of amplifying a campaign messaging. 

For our campaigns, we look at influencers who can amplify the core campaign messaging through relatable stories and help drive conversation, from time to time. These range from top influencers from a PAN India lens to regional influencers and micro-influencers, depending on the campaign objective.

For celebrities, we have a similar strategy. We associate with celebrities if their real-life experiences or stories are relevant to our campaign narrative and can help us drive the campaign message effectively. 

For our Term Campaign, we partnered with cricketer Rishabh Pant as his real-life story of survival was a perfect fit with our campaign messaging that was based on life’s unpredictability, driving the importance of securing loved ones’ future. 

Similarly, for our first-ever East campaign this year, we wanted to lead with a trusted voice who could be a catalyst for change towards responsible financial planning. So, we roped in Abir Chatterjee, who is a celebrated actor in the region, to share his inspiring life lessons and anecdotes, to drive the campaign messaging.

For our women-focused campaign, we partnered with Gujarat Giants during the Women’s cricket season in 2024 and featured the real life of cricketers; who narrated their stories of overcoming challenges in life with discipline and planning, emphasizing the need to financially plan for our family’s future.

How do you integrate purpose-led communication with brand campaigns without it feeling forced?

For us, it has always been more than selling insurance; it is about driving a purpose – to enable a life of pride for all Indians.

And the various themes of our campaigns seamlessly reflect our core purpose. Be it highlighting the stories of resilience of students and parents during Covid times or overcoming discrimination by owing one’s identity - our campaigns have always had a distinct voice, seamlessly integrating purpose along with financial independence.

In today’s climate-conscious world, do you see CSR increasingly becoming a differentiator for financial brands?

Social consciousness amongst consumers has been growing, especially amongst the younger audiences.

At HDFC Life, we have a strong commitment to CSR & ESG; with initiatives ranging across education, healthcare, environmental sustainability and much more, which will continue.

What will be the next big focus area for HDFC Life’s marketing in the next 2–3 years?

We will continue our efforts to identify new audience segments across regions. With consumer preferences and mindset evolving, it is critical to identify specific cohorts we can target through focused strategies. We will also continue to strengthen our regional marketing efforts across South and East markets, incorporate our learnings and look at customized efforts to drive deeper consumer connect.