Evolving brands being true to their roots will stay relevant: Vishal Subharwal, HDFC Life

With a presentation called ‘Long Term Greedy’, Vishal Subharwal, CMO and Group Head-Strategy, HDFC Life introduced the audience to the strategies adopted by the life insurance company in this evolved market. Subharwal was speaking at the Pitch BFSI Marketing Summit 2024.

He began by addressing the fact it is critical for the company to look at things from different perspectives and talking from a business POV, how India is a large target market with so many potential investors. 

He said that mostly marketers focus on the demand side of things but there isn't enough attention given to the supply side. From a regulatory or the government standpoint, there are many marketers out there. If it;s BFSI, it's a beneficial thing, improving financial inclusion and penetration of the products.

From a marketers standpoint, what does high competition mean? It is essentially a market for losers. “It is a loser's game,” he exclaimed. "If you're a BFSI organization, and you're trying to establish a brand, your starting ground is challenging. For example, in the world of life insurance, there are already 24 players, with 2 new additions. In all, there are 26 players and it's just been 24 years since privatization," Subharwal noted, highlighting that there are also many regulatory changes that might happen.

He cited an interesting video by Peter Thiel where he spoke about how competition drives margins down, profitability down and therefore, makes life difficult for a marketeer. "That is the number one trend that we are faced with. It is great for a marketing platform, there's more market budgets, but the ROI from a marketer's perspective, continues to fall because of this hyper competition. It's kind of a decades old video that I urge every marketer to watch," he said. 

Second is Consumer In-Attention, and it's almost an epidemic, he said. "If we look at people across ages, everyone is continuously scrolling through the phones. Whatever you have to communicate, you have to do in a matter of microseconds. That is what consumes a lot of marketers on a daily basis. Things like, what is the click through rate that I am getting, what are the impressions that I am getting. One doesn't even know what is happening out there, but there are these numbers and statistics that are thrown at you. This is a reality that we as marketers have to life through and deal with," noted Subherwal. 

He also spoke about the rapid evolution of technology. "We spoke about meta-verse just 3 years ago and people aren’t even interested in it anymore, or even Web 3 is forgotten. People are currently after Chat-gpt or speaking about Gen AI."

He added that hyper competition means your brand will have a shorter life cycle and thus, lower profitability: "If your brand is up there, it has to consistently communicate to the customers, in the evolving societal context."

Marketers are focused on only  performance-based marketing as it gives instant results, like ROI gives instant results and they are willing to cut corners, which I term as ‘Long Term Greedy’, noted Subherwal.

"Therefore, my advice to marketers typically is, that whenever you're faced with a challenge like this, always 'Invert’ and solve the problem, which is being caused by those three trends. The core essence of a brand is you're not essentially a brand if you can't charge a customer premium over your competitor. In the world of banking and financial services, most products tend to be commodities, so how do you ensure that your brand is differentiative there? You can charge a premium as a brand, so you will as a brand stand out," he said.

"A business ‘focused on customers’ will delight its shareholders much more than ‘business focused shareholders’ will delight its customers. If you're offering a service it's important that the customer is at the center of it. The brands should focus on finding a sweet spot to shine through, understanding what works for the brand ethos and the consumer as well, be it a new generation plan or anything else, a targeted customer can be attracted by finding what works best for the demographic. The third most important thing to remember is that content is king but context is more important. The context with which the people in society are living, bringing out real stories from there, the way you depict the people in campaigns should resonate with the real people," he elaborated. 

He concluded by talking about media fragmentation today with limited budgets. "From a media planning perspective it becomes really difficult to figure out where to put your money. You need a plan, the first part is persuasion, after creatives it's the most important part, and if it works then things work out great. After persuasion second is virality, if you're hoping to get viral you need to find the audience touch points. Lastly, staying true to your roots, but also learning how to evolve with changing times, will keep you relevant," he said.