As India’s insurance sector continues to pursue deeper penetration, one strategic question is becoming increasingly relevant: Will the industry’s next phase of growth come from expanding physical distribution, or from creating entirely new demand through digital distribution?
Against this backdrop Medianews4u.com caught up with Amaresh Jena, Chief Marketing Officer, Pramerica Life Insurance, to discuss how digital distribution is evolving from a customer acquisition channel into a market-creation engine for the insurance industry.
For decades, insurance growth has been closely tied to expanding branch networks, recruiting more agents and extending geographical reach. While these channels remain indispensable, digital distribution is changing the economics of growth by enabling insurers to engage new customer segments, build awareness at scale and generate incremental demand without proportionately expanding physical infrastructure.
Rather than focusing on digital transformation in the conventional sense, the discussion will examine the broader strategic shift underway in insurance distribution and what it could mean for the industry’s future.
Q. The ‘This Is My Climb’ campaign focusses entirely on emotional stories. Why did you choose real-life struggles instead of showing policy benefits or premium rates?
People don’t buy life insurance because they understand insurance. They buy it because they understand the responsibilities they carry for the people they love. Our role as marketers is to bridge that gap.
With This Is My Climb, we consciously chose to begin with people rather than products. Every individual is climbing towards something – a child’s education, a first home, a better future for their family or the dream of leaving behind a legacy. Insurance exists to protect those aspirations. Once customers see that connection, the conversation naturally moves to products, features and financial solutions.
That’s why we don’t see storytelling and product communication as competing ideas. They serve different purposes. Storytelling helps people recognise why insurance matters in their lives; product communication helps them decide which solution is right for them. One creates relevance, the other enables informed choice.
Q. Parents sacrifice a lot for their kids’ future. How does your team convert that emotional campaign message into trust when a customer buys a policy?
Marketing can create interest, but it cannot manufacture trust. Trust is earned through every interaction a customer has with the brand.
Once someone engages with our communication, our responsibility is to ensure that the experience consistently reinforces the promise we’ve made. That means making information easy to understand, offering products that address genuine customer needs, enabling a simple buying experience, and being responsive throughout the relationship.
We don’t view this as a marketing objective alone. It requires close alignment across product, distribution, technology, operations and customer service. When every function works towards delivering the same promise, customers gain confidence that what they saw in our communication is exactly what they experience with the brand. Ultimately, that’s what turns interest into a long-term relationship.
Q. A couple of years back you chose Publicis Worldwide India as your main creative agency for this big brand relaunch. How has the relationship progressed since?
Our partnership has evolved alongside our marketing priorities. It began with shaping the brand narrative and bringing This Is My Climb to life. As we strengthened our D2C business, the relationship naturally expanded to include the creative strategy for our performance marketing initiatives as well.
What has worked well is the continuity in thinking. Whether we’re building long-term brand affinity or creating communication that drives digital acquisition, the underlying philosophy remains the same—making insurance more relevant to people’s lives.
Today, we don’t look at brand and performance as two separate marketing engines. They complement each other. Strong brand communication creates familiarity and consideration, while performance marketing helps convert that intent into meaningful customer engagement. Having one strategic partner across both has helped us build a more integrated and consistent marketing ecosystem.
Q. Most Indian insurance ads use fear to sell policies. Your new campaign focusses on resilience instead. Has this softer approach brought in more business from younger parents?
I would actually describe it as a shift from focusing on uncertainty to focusing on possibility. Today’s parents are thinking about much more than financial protection. They’re planning for their children’s education, building long-term wealth, creating better opportunities and leaving behind a stronger future for the next generation. Insurance has an important role to play in enabling those aspirations.
Our communication reflects that changing mindset. Rather than asking people what could go wrong, we wanted to acknowledge what they are striving to achieve and how financial planning can support those ambitions.
While it is difficult to attribute business outcomes to a single campaign, we have seen encouraging engagement from younger audiences who are looking at insurance as part of a broader financial planning journey rather than a standalone protection product. For us, that’s an important shift because it expands the role insurance can play in people’s lives.
Q. Group life insurance often gets ignored in big emotional ad campaigns. How do you plan to connect these personal stories with your corporate business clients?
Our partnership business spans a diverse ecosystem—from employers and brokers to banks, NBFCs, MFIs and other distribution partners. While each of these audiences plays a different role, they are all ultimately serving the same end customer.
That’s why we don’t see our brand narrative and partnership business as separate conversations. This Is My Climb is built around universal life aspirations and responsibilities, and those are relevant irrespective of the distribution channel. The role of our partners is to make those conversations more contextual for the customers they serve.
For us, the objective is not to create different brand stories for different channels, but to create one compelling narrative that partners can adapt to their customer segments. Whether it’s helping a young family plan ahead, enabling financial inclusion in underserved markets, or supporting an employer’s employee benefits programme, the underlying promise remains the same—making financial protection more meaningful and accessible.
Q. Do Indian consumers buy policies after seeing these ads or do they just like the video?
Life insurance is rarely an impulse purchase. People don’t watch a film today and buy a policy tomorrow. What advertising does is far more important—it shapes memory, creates familiarity and helps people recognise when insurance becomes relevant in their own lives.
When that moment arrives—whether it’s becoming a parent, buying a home or planning for the future—we want Pramerica Life to be among the brands they naturally consider. That’s where marketing plays its role. The eventual purchase is influenced by many other factors, including product fit, advice, customer experience and the confidence people have in the brand.
So, we don’t see campaigns and conversions as separate outcomes. Campaigns create consideration, and the broader business ecosystem converts that consideration into long-term customer relationships..
Q. Many financial brands launch big campaigns but fail to sustain them. What tactics have worked in sustaining this campaign?
One of the conscious decisions we made was to build a brand platform rather than a campaign. Campaigns are designed around a moment in time; platforms are designed to stay relevant as customer stories evolve.
This Is My Climb gives us that flexibility. Every stage of life presents a new aspiration—a first job, marriage, parenthood, retirement or building wealth—and each of those moments creates a different conversation around financial planning. The platform allows us to tell new stories while remaining anchored to the same brand thought.
That consistency has also helped us integrate the platform across our marketing ecosystem. Whether it’s brand communication, digital campaigns or product-led storytelling, the underlying narrative remains the same. Over time, that’s how a campaign evolves into a distinctive brand asset.
Q. You talk about long-term commitment in your ads. However, many Indians stop paying their policy premiums after three years. How will you fix this issue?
Long-term commitment doesn’t begin after a customer buys a policy; it begins before they do. One of the biggest responsibilities of marketing is to help customers understand not just the benefits of a product, but the commitment they’re making and the role it plays in their long-term financial planning.
That’s why we’re consciously moving towards simpler communication, clearer product propositions and more contextual conversations around life stages and financial goals. When customers understand why they’re buying a solution—not just what they’re buying – they are more likely to stay invested in it.
Persistency is therefore not just a servicing metric; it’s also a reflection of how well we’ve educated customers, aligned products with their needs and set the right expectations from the very beginning.
Q. How is your team using AI to make the online policy buying process simpler for new customers?
We see AI as an enabler of relevance rather than just efficiency. Every customer is at a different life stage, has different financial priorities and engages with content differently. AI allows us to create communication that is far more contextual and personalised.
It’s also helping us significantly improve creative agility. Instead of producing one generic campaign, we can now create multiple creative variations tailored to different customer segments, life stages and product needs, making our communication more meaningful without compromising speed.
At the same time, we recognise that life insurance is a high-involvement decision. AI can simplify discovery, personalise communication and make the buying process more intuitive, but customers often continue to value human guidance before making a long-term financial commitment. The future, in our view, is not AI versus people – it’s AI making every interaction more relevant while advisors add confidence where it matters most.
Q. Your field agents are used to selling features and tax benefits. How hard was it to train them to sell insurance using this new philosophy?
I wouldn’t describe it as a shift away from products. Product knowledge remains fundamental to good financial advice. What has evolved is how those conversations begin.
Today, customers are more informed and have access to abundant information online. They are looking for context as much as content. They want to understand how a solution fits into their own life stage, financial goals and responsibilities. That’s where our advisors play a critical role.
Our focus has therefore been on enabling advisors to have more meaningful financial conversations rather than simply explaining product features. We give a detailed focus on training of our advisors, a clear and ambitious career graph. The objective is to help customers make informed decisions with confidence.
When an advisor understands the person before recommending the product, the conversation becomes more relevant, consultative and valuable for the customer.
Q. How do you measure if ad films are giving your business a good return on investment?
Our marketing imperatives broadly work across two horizons. The first is long-term brand building, where our brand narrative and platforms such as This Is My Climb are designed to build awareness, consideration and preference for Pramerica Life over time. The second is driving immediate business outcomes, where communication is aligned to specific customer segments, products and moments of intent, with a sharper focus on measurable results.
The metrics therefore vary by objective. For long-term brand building, we look at Share of Voice, Top of Mind Recall & Consideration. b. Building higher scores in these is a long term focus area leading to amplifying sales & service outcomes as an organization. For immediate business outcomes, we look more closely at conversions and return on marketing investment.
We don’t see these as competing priorities. Long-term brand building creates familiarity and future demand, while targeted business communication helps convert existing intent into measurable outcomes. Balancing both allows us to build the brand for the long term while remaining accountable for the business today.
Q. Your ads show amazing stories of ordinary citizens. But your business relies heavily on selling to the Indian Armed Forces. Why is there such a gap between who you show in your ads and who actually buys your policies?
I would perhaps look at it differently. Our association with the Indian Armed Forces is one of our proudest strengths, and it reflects our long-standing commitment to a community that has unique protection needs. But today, Pramerica Life has evolved into a diversified business with customers across affinity groups likes defence, bank led associations agency, partnerships, digital and affinity channels.
This Is My Climb was deliberately created as a universal brand platform because the emotions it celebrates are not defined by a profession. Whether it’s a soldier protecting his family, a young entrepreneur building a business, or parents working towards their child’s future, the underlying aspiration is the same – to create a more secure tomorrow for the people who matter most.
The campaign isn’t about portraying a particular customer segment. It’s about reflecting a mindset that resonates across life stages, professions and geographies, making the brand relevant to every individual who is striving to build a better future.
Q. What is the biggest operational risk that your company faces as you scale up your operations across India?
Every growing organisation reaches a point where scaling distribution is no longer the biggest challenge—scaling capability is. As we expand across markets, channels and customer segments, our focus is on ensuring that the quality of experience remains consistent irrespective of how a customer chooses to engage with us.
That means continuously strengthening the capabilities that support sustainable growth—our people, technology, governance, risk management and customer servicing. Growth, in our view, should never come at the cost of customer confidence.
Ultimately, the real measure of scale is not how many customers you acquire, but whether you can continue to serve every customer with the same level of consistency as the organisation grows.
Q. Brand trust is hard to build but very easy to lose. What steps have you taken internally to ensure your customer service matches the promise of your ads?
A brand promise is only as strong as the organisation behind it. Customers don’t experience a brand through advertising alone—they experience it through every interaction they have with the company.
That’s why we’ve always believed that building the brand externally must go hand in hand with strengthening capabilities internally. Whether it’s simplifying processes, investing in technology, enabling our distribution teams, or fostering a customer-first culture, every function has a role in delivering the experience customers expect.
For me, one of the most important responsibilities of marketing is to ensure that the promise we communicate is one the organisation can consistently deliver. That’s how brands build credibility over time—not by making bigger promises, but by fulfilling them every single day.
