Dead men tell advertising tales

Dead men tell advertising tales
Tara Sinha

Someone at LIC has been getting up from the wrong side of his bed. Yes, I am sure it is his and not hers, as it would be very unlikely for a woman to have been so very insensitive. And whoever that someone is, he must surely belong to the LIC. Why? Because the two ads have been ``created'' and released by two different ad agencies. The common factor is clearly the client rep at the LIC. The alternative is to consider this as a case of great minds thinking alike or, dare one complete the saying, fools seldom differing!

Let me describe the two ads that attempt to sell life insurance through the tragedy of death. By the way, the press ads are not the only ones following this route; there is a recent TV ad depicting a brave young/old widow coping with the complexity of getting her daughter married off. All her efforts succeed only because of the foresight of her dead husband in trusting in LIC. Now one might say that tugging at heartstrings is a perfectly legitimate and effective device to sell insurance. Absolutely agree: I give full marks and more to the warm, sentimental and so positive Allianz `A Promise is a Promise' television commercial. But at the same time I absolutely disagree and find unacceptable the strategy of using a young girl to point an accusing finger at her dead dad. That is what they do in the Radeus ad: A young, big-eyed girl with a sad and haunted look is quoted in the copy as saying, ``Papa's gone. Mama says he didn't leave anything for us. Except a lot of people asking us to return their money. And mylittle sister who's not born yet.''

Unbelievable, but true! I cannot understand how anyone could practice this kind of cruel exploitation. I can only presume that those who were responsible for this ad had neither any conscience nor any concern of what affect it would have on kids (and young mums) who would read the ad. Though not quite as violent an assault on their sensibilities as the tragic killings shown so repeatedly on TV news reports (the latest horror sequence `starred' a young Palestinian lad being shot to death), this ad certainly displays a gross absence of good sense and decency. I do hope the top brass at the LIC will pull it off ASAP.

The next ad follows the pattern of the `How she was able to cope with her daughter's upbringing and marriage' television commercial. Having lived a term of 62 years or so, Shri Ravikant Bajaj proves his durability by continuing to soldier on in the stirring words of the photo caption headline: `Still an earning member of his family.' Who says there is no life after death! The copy praises his foresight with full of soulful hindsight. A laudable objective executed in a somewhat ham handed manner. I am not sure how many people will read the copy of an ad that looks so much like an `in memoriam' notice recognising the merits of the dear departed.

I would certainly be very interested to know what consumer insight led to the LIC adopting the dead men route to sell life insurance. I would also be more than very interested to find out if these ads were pre-tested (or `post-tested) to gauge effectiveness. Will anyone at LIC, or Radeus or R.K. Swamy (the agency for the dear departed ad) respond?

Maybe, just maybe, this is the way the LIC is gearing up to meet competition Dead On!