Go Digit General Insurance launched its new brand campaign, an anthem featuring ambassador Virat Kohli titled “Do the Digit Digit” in the first week of July. The film depicts Kohli grooving to the anthem to highlight how three crore Indians have placed their trust in Digit to insure their health, motor, travel, and property, among others.
In a telephonic interview with Medianews4u.com, Tanya Marwah, Vice President, and Head – Brand Marketing, Go Digit General Insurance, spoke about the brand’s growth spurt and objectives behind the campaign.
Digit claims to be the fastest growing private general insurance company, with 62pc growth in FY 2022 driven by motor, property and health, taking its overall market share to 2.4pc (up from 1.7) and motor insurance share to 4.7pc (from 3.7). In its fifth year, you have crossed the milestone of Rs. 5,000 cr in annual revenue. What explains the growth spurt in 2021-22?
The pandemic was an incidental year for us. While motor is still our biggest segment, non-motor was a segment that grew, especially on the back of health during the pandemic period. Growth came from both motor and non-motor insurance.
Our focus on innovation was one of the things that worked for us during the period. Go Digit Insurance was one of the first insurance companies in the world to launch a Covid-based product when no one else was providing it. We launched it in February 2020, a time where people were just thinking about whether Covid was a pandemic or not. One of the benefits for Go Digit Insurance was the launch of a fixed benefit product, which was later formalised into our non-fixed regular coverage.
After a product is launched, you need to sustain that growth. For us, the sustainability came from the other health benefits and products that we had, which corporates wanted to buy outright. In our health journey, group products have grabbed the maximum eyeballs. We cover around 40,000-plus corporates and close to 50 lakh lives.
When most of the insurance players exited from offering Covid19-related insurance coverage, we are still doing offering it. Our pricing and approach were sound, and we didn’t go completely bullish.
These factors, combined with technology, are our backbone. With the help of technology, we were able to communicate and spread the word about our products during the pandemic. We were able to give our products to the partners because we have 85pc of our volume coming from partners.
Go Digit Insurance is a digital-first company, but our distribution network is very strong. 40pc of our traffic is from Tier 1 cities, and Tier 4 cities contribute to 10 pc of our business.
Digit is available via multi-brand insurtech platforms and directly online, and is also sold through POSP/ agents. You mention that 85pc volume comes from partners. How is each channel growing?
The largest contributor is the partner model – a combination of agents, brokers and dealers. We also have our institutional partners like health tech companies. Despite being a five-year old company, we have the entire width covered. The advantage Digit brings to the table is technology. We are disrupting the legacy distribution network. We are using disruptive technology. It is a conscious call we have taken and the formula has worked for us. That’s why we are a profitable company. If we are only concentrating on the online channels or D2C methods, then the cost of acquisitions doesn’t justify the scale of growth. We have to be present where India is present, where a majority of them want to buy it through the agents.
The music video approach seems to be getting very popular, notably in fintech, which is new. Explain the strategy and objectives of this anthem-video.
The primary objective was to launch a campaign to increase brand awareness. The brand is growing and has a 3-crore customer base with a strong network of partners. This campaign is to make sure you have heard about Digit, and then the rest of the channels will work towards getting you as the consumer.
‘Do the Digit Digit’ is our first big campaign; hence, we have to go with the corporate branding. The brand campaign is a catapulting campaign that gets us a place in the arena of insurance.
From a strategy point of view, this category runs on trust, which is the front door. The biggest plank of trust that I currently have is the three crore customers that we have achieved in just five years. This message, I am taking it across and making people understand how we were able to achieve so many people’s trust in this short period of time.
At times, insurance-related campaigns are emotionally draining. We wanted to change that attitude and to relate insurance to protection. We thought of bringing in elements of fun and lightness into the campaign. We wanted to use the song as a tool because this is India and people get polarised by songs. The campaign idea was to build the name of the brand and increase the recall so that the next time that they are exposed to our plans by agents or web aggregators, they know us. It’s a familiarity bias that they will possess.
Kohli has been on board even before the campaign, doing the Digit Dance, reportedly as an investor and noticeably as ambassador. How have you evaluated the returns on campaigns featuring him? And can you take us through the brand’s journey – pre and post Virat.
We are very proud of the fact that our brand ambassador is also our investor. Kohli’s conviction for the brand comes through in the campaign as well. For almost three years, we had almost zero marketing spend, which I call a core strengthening phase. I come from an e-commerce background where crores are spent as marketing budgets.
Three years back, Digit engaged throughout the year with simplified insurance content. For example, if you’re in Bombay and there is a flood situation coming up, we will have a full series of communication on how people can keep themselves safe and then, of course, insurance renewal will also be a part of the communication. We have humongous organic growth on our social media handles.
Then there arrives a time in your brand’s life where you have to catapult yourself because partners start asking that we know you for simplicity and everything but the prospective customer has not heard about you. This is the stage where Virat Kohli comes in. He brings a lot of trust to the brand.
Right now, Kohli is going through what may not be the best phase in his career, but he is still a face and personality who can connect to consumers and prospective consumers in tier-3 and tier-4 cities of the country. He is synonymous with trustworthiness.
What is the share of media spending on digital and how is this growing?
We are completely digital as of now. Later, we may explore some other media, like outdoor or cinema. We will swing that because we want to tread a little slowly and see what’s going to create the impact.
On what channels will the three-crore anthem and related campaigns run?
Video is our main creative asset; hence, we will be looking at properties that provide video assets. Youtube still continues to be one of our biggest platforms, but we will be using platforms like DV 360 to also explore other routes to reach out to the customer, which is more of a programmatic buy.
