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Sometime back, I watched a film from Policy Bazar on Term Insurance. This time there was a small catch. The film was about a mother joining her job just six months after her first childbirth.
Created by Enormous Brands, it is a decent film meeting the objective of asking working women to re-evaluate their need for term insurance and contributing to securing the family’s future.
There is hardly anything wrong with the film. In fact, the TG appreciates it more than films by other brands addressing them. And the film wisely un-intrusively is able to address, doubts, guilt, solution, address influencer subset and smoothen the fear of death.
However, if I have to believe my friend Mr Verma, the moment you watch a few more times, the parody of the situation starts appearing. Here we go – mini=episodic if not frame by frame. And this is what Mr Verma has to add.
The Term Insurance Working Mom
The mother, while getting ready to step out of work, is conversing with the baby. She voices all the doubts that the brands want to answer. A longer format allows a singular focus on her internal question answer, profiling her life and then like every other communication present the right decision and action she has made.
So, it is evening or early morning is left to your imagination. She starts with her conversation with her boss, assuring that she has taken the ticket printout (Oh!), she is ready to leave in five minutes and that she will see her boss at the airport.
Them starts the mushiness and an attempt to press all the possible triggers for consideration. It is like you enter a new room. You know there is a switchboard on your right as you come in. However, you are not sure which of these will really light up the room and which is for the fan you don’t want.
So here we go. First, thank you Diya (that’s the six-month child ) for making me Maa from mai. How poetic. Talk about people’s perception and questioning her need to join a job so soon. That ugly question raising its head- if you were not ready to take care (read give time and energy to Diya), why did you give birth to her? Slowly slim in the stereotyped Buaji (father’s sister) as the propagator of this horrid question. Slowly put that thought of ‘First-time-mother’ and a relationship of long-term-interdependence. The mother-daughter bond defined with happiness and reduced waking hours.
Policy Bazar Hits The Iron When It Is Hot
Now that one has sufficiently primed the audience to drop the anchor. The part that the client eagerly wants to say. The morbid insurance thought. ‘Why two days, if I was to leave forever, I have taken term insurance to ensure that you will live comfortably to realise your dreams’. This is where, for me, the un-naturalness of the conversation kicks in. These are actual spoke words to the six-month-old and not the voice-in-the head.
The whole experience of a beautiful experiential communication suddenly goes fault. The fizz is out of the bottle.
Mr Verma or I have no suggestion on how and when the dreaded Insurance with ‘leave you forever’ though could have entered the communication. But Mr Verma is sure, this is not the right way.
Smoothening The Guilt.
The agency then gives the placebo offer to tackle the guilt of a potential working woman. The magical term plan as a part of six-month-old Diya’s upbringing. So that when she grows up, gets married and then have her children, as and when quizzed, she can tell her children the story about their grandmother. How she learnt to have her career and take care of everything, not giving up on the dreams by this Term Insurance.
Don’t Forget The Influencer, Dad.
The supportive husband makes its customary entry towards the end. Agency and client removing any doubts in the mid of audience weather the working mother was a single mother. Slightly nudging the male audience towards their contribution in the process. Be a good husband, and a good father get term insurance because you understand them better.
Who Is To Blame Or to Celebrate.
Not sure, if it is the greedy client wanting to have an immediate reaction? Was it the agency willingly loading the film? Did the agency believe the format would keep the audience engaged while the protagonist walked through multiple rooms while getting ready?
Story Abhi Baki Hai Mere Dost.
Don’t miss, the silliest of the twist at the end. A fake attempt to make the viewer smile. ‘Priya.. aapne papa ka khayal rakna’
Learning.
Any communication including DVC is a complete experience. It must be evaluated for overall impression and the aftertaste it leaves in the mind of the target group.
There is no reason to purposefully break down the film in the way Mr Verma does while evaluating the script of the final product. However, I do believe that if Enormous would have met Mr Verma earlier, they could further enhance the impact and iron out such doubts.
If Mr Verma can think so, any viewer including Mrs Verma who is a working woman can think in the same way.
………………………………..
Mr Verma for no known reason likes this ad by MAX LIFE INSURANCE where death is an integral part.
Or maybe, Mr Verma has reason to like it and my mother reason to hate is the same. My nickname is Sanju
BLOG/63/2019
