“It is a continuous effort to directionally understand drift in consumers’ interests"

The pandemic has re-shaped our perspective around the responsibilities of fathers at home and the way they are adapting to a new way of life while simultaneously fulfilling the promise of protecting their family. Recognising the larger role played by fathers towards the family as well as the society, this Father’s Day, SBI Life Insurance, one of the most trusted private life insurers in the country, released a heart-warming digital film. It depicts the emotional and protective side of a father towards his evolving responsibilities amidst the pandemic.

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SBI Life’s #PapaHainNa digital property has been successfully running since 2015. On every Father’s Day, SBI Life has been launching a new film showcasing the supportive side of a father and his influence on his family, especially his children. These films capture different aspects of fatherhood – from the role of a father as the ‘protector’ of his family to the flavour of modern fatherhood to capturing the precious moments between a father and child during the lockdown.

Speaking to Adgully, Ravindra Sharma, Chief of Brand, Corporate Communication & CSR, SBI Life, explains the entire rationale behind the film and how they keep culling out new insights for their film to celebrate Father’s Day and keep the sentiment alive well beyond the annual occasion.

What was your objective for this year’s Father’s Day campaign – #PapaHainNa? Please tell us about the rationale or thinking behind this and where did the insight for this campaign come from?

Since 2015, SBI Life Insurance has owned the fatherhood space through its #PapaHainNa property and used various insights to cut through the cultural nuances and showcase a father’s unspoken love. In an effort to acknowledge the role of a father as the protector of the family, year after year, as the #PapaHainNa property continues to grow stronger, it further consolidates brand SBI Life’ ownership of this space.

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While we all are cognizant of how the pandemic has been impacting our lives, work life, social gatherings, everything has changed and we’ve adapted to the needs of a post-COVID-19 world. It has also redefined relationships, both domestic and professional. We realised the need to recognise the unique societal standing of fathers, who have been playing the role of both provider and protector for not only the immediate family, but even for people beyond the family who are dependent on them. The objective for SBI Life #PapaHainNa Father’s Day conversation was to highlight the evolving role of fathers and the new responsibilities taken up by them during the pandemic.

The lockdowns have been especially harsh on the marginalised, where most domestic helpers, migrant workers and their families faced challenges and found it difficult to cope with the uncertain situation. But amidst the chaos, many found a father figure in their employers, who treated the domestic helpers as part of their own extended family. The story of Sumit Ke Papa is one such story, through which we aim to recognise the larger role played by fathers towards the family as well as society. This is a story that deserved being told for how it can inspire others to do good. We hope it encourages many more fathers and families to play a larger role towards the society and help the lesser privileged get through this difficult phase faced by mankind.

How did your creative agency conceptualise the idea from the start to execution? Since this has been produced during the lockdown, how did you manage to pull it off?

We’ve all seen or heard of stories like Sumit Ke Papa and we just wanted to bring it to everyone’s notice that the qualities of fatherhood go beyond what meets the eye. After identifying and learning about families who have done good during the pandemic or seen people educating and supporting their domestic helpers, there was research and personal interviews that were done to understand the contributions of families towards their helpers and the motivations to do so. Needless to say, the shoot required safety measures and we managed with a minimal crew to put out this heart-warming #PapaHainNa digital video.

Every year you have been creating the Father’s Day film. How is this year’s film different from the earlier ones? Is the messaging identical to the earlier films and how will this help the brand?

SBI Life’s #PapaHainNa is one of our key brand properties, which has been developed with over 6 years of hard work. With every #PapaHainNa film, we try to cover a different aspect of fatherhood that is topical and derived from a relevant cultural insight. For instance, we’ve explored spoken word poetry, a musical film with Neeti Mohan, talking about the new age father in Naye Zamaane Ke Papa. In 2018, the campaign focused on a father’s role of providing protection to his child through the course of life, interspersed with the flavour of modern fatherhood. In 2019, we tried to highlight the fact that every father has a unique and special approach to fatherhood, while in 2020, we highlighted the special moments between a father and child during the ‘new normal’.

This year, we have taken this aspect of protection one step further. The film shows how a father is protective of not only his own family, but also the extended families in the society. To put it in a nutshell, regardless of the blood-relations, fathers know how to take care of their family very well.

The essence of #PapaHainNa, that is, a father’s promise to protect his child through every circumstance, remains the connecting thread through the years.

This is a soft, emotional, feel-good film with a long duration. How do you plan to leverage the media and what is your media strategy for this film?

The story of Sumit ke Papa is indeed an emotionally engaging one, more importantly, it is a story that needs to be told, especially in today’s context, where a father is going beyond his immediate family and playing the role of a protector in our society. As for the duration of the film, we felt the need to spend more time on the plot to bring out the emotional appeal. Also, in our experience, when you have a strong story to tell, which is relevant for the audience, the duration does not matter.

We have a multi-faceted media strategy, apart from the traditional approach of releasing and promoting the film through our social media handles, leveraging networks like Inshorts, Hotstar and Frodoh to reach out to relevant audiences, we’ve also looked at data-driven targeted advertising to help us build brand salience and recall with the audience.

Further, to motivate individuals in the audience to don the societal father’s hat, we’ve also put in place an influencer campaign on social media platforms, encouraging people to share inspirational stories about fathers or people who have contributed to the society at large.

What are the other engagement activities that you had planned for Father’s Day? Anything unique and sticky that was created for people to remember Father’s Day?

The soul of any campaign lies in the story it is trying to tell, while you may do multiple engagement activities around the campaign for amplification, if you do not have a good story it will not stick. Our campaign theme comes from a deep cultural insight of the post-COVID-19 era, where we are witnessing a father’s role evolving to be the protector at a societal stage. The relevance of this story to the audience today is very strong and hence, it stays with you long after you have watched the film.

Yes, we do have multiple engagement activities planned throughout the week, for example, Micro-influencer outreach engaging with targeted social media communities encouraging members to share similar stories of selfless deeds done by other community members, we hope people can relate to such peer stories of selfless work and be inspired to do their bit for the lesser privileged among us.

What has been the impact for SBI Life as a brand during the pandemic? How will life insurance as a category bounce back and what are some of the new marketing initiatives your company is planning?

Fortunately, for SBI Life Insurance, the business has continued to grow. In our experience, the pandemic has induced an increased awareness of life insurance among consumers. There has also been a strong push for digital adoption, as an organisation we’ve been able roll out customer facing apps, digital tools for agents and sales force, digitise processes and increase our digital relevance. We are focused on communicating the message of our digital transformation initiatives to more and more people.

It is a continuous effort to directionally understand drift in consumers’ interests and conceptualise campaigns that are relevant to the consumers’ evolving needs.