Summary
Selling Insurance without selling insurance
Challenge
1.Increase in the number of car policies sold 2.Increase in number of unassisted calls The challenge for PhonePe therefore, was to find a chink in the armour of the leader, PolicyBazaar, and promise something that had not already been told to consumers. OUR STRATEGIC CHALLENGE : PhonePe had to find a weakness in a competitor who was the category
Objective
For PhonePe, a payments company with virtually no insurance credentials, making a mark as an online insurance aggregator was tough. There were various ‘category truths' that this industry was operating with, set largely in part by one big leader brand, and all other players following its lead. This resulted in the category taking advantage of consumers, which was something that even consumers had accepted. This case is a demonstration of how PhonePe got consumers to question long-standing category truths. By bringing to light an oft-known but seldom acknowledged problem, PhonePe managed to become a worthy contender in the category.
Strategy
Product Innovation: The first step to a tall claim is to actually have a product that delivers it - Contrary to the conventional wisdom in the category, PhonePe took a key decision in its car insurance business model - the only insurance company that would not call back customers (unless they initiated the first call) The communications strategy included two key elements in the campaign: 1: Reach assets - ATL media (TV, OOH, audio spots, digital) 2: Engagement Assets - Through a social experiment and a Twitter (X) hashtag campaign
Data
Our Insight: While buying insurance online (much like in life), in the quest for ease and convenience, you sometimes innocuously trade something far more valuable Our strategy, therefore, was to make consumers realise that the 'real price you pay while buying an insurance policy online…is your privacy!' And in a category that was built on the promise of all the different benefits that they would get (range, discounts, add-ons), our pitch would be built on the promise of what consumers would not get - annoying calls and a loss of privacy. Our approach in spotting a subliminal need in insurance consumers and offering something new and differentiated that has never been spoken about in the insurance category brought us unprecedented results, especially in the debut campaign.
Solution
Results
For a newcomer in any category, achieving impressive top-line figures is crucial. In the case of insurance aggregators, this translates to the actual number of policies sold. PhonePe demonstrated remarkable performance with a 13% surge in car insurance policy sales during the campaign period. In April, during the campaign period, in terms of the premiums booked, PhonePe did 100% better than the category, while the overall category slumped by 29%. PhonePe's unassisted calls rose to more than 90% compared to the category leader, PolicyBazaar, which essentially meant that more customers were converting by themselves without any external intervention. Because the leader Policybazaar had about 50% of their calls unassisted, we wanted to be at least as much as that. Compared to pre campaign, PhonePe's TOM scores went up by 1.4X and Spontaneous recall scores increased by 150%. This result was significant for us to understand if we had entered the consumer's mind space. We also saw an increase in Top of Funnel numbers by 19% during the campaign period versus before the campaign period.
