From agri-business to insurance, with stops in FMCG and telecom, it has been a career of varied experience for Sanjay Tripathy who heads marketing and direct sales as an executive vice-president at HDFC Life Insurance. Under his leadership HDFC Life has come out with the well known Sar Uthake Jiyo campaign.Tripathy has a management degree from Institute of Rural Management Anand and more than 17 years of work experience. He started his career with Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd (GCMMF) in 1992, after which he worked with various organisations including Frito-Lay (PepsiCo), Mattel and Reliance Infocomm before moving on to his current role in 2004.

Tripathy, an active member in various industry bodies, is passionate about mentoring management graduates, reading and sports. He also pursues graphology.

My most memorable marketing initiative

If I had to choose one, it would be the birth of HDFC Life’s Sar Utha ke Jiyo . I am extremely proud of the fact that we pioneered the values of self-respect and dignity in insurance while every other brand was resorting to the plain old vanilla ‘tax saving’ or ‘fear appeal’.

Insurance is a very hard-to-differentiate-in industry. The consumer can’t differentiate the products and features of one brand from another. In such a scenario our brand thought differentiates us from the rest of the players. Since 2005, we have been one of the very few brands in the country to have been consistent in delivering the same communication idea. This can be limiting in its scope, but we have pulled off some great campaigns that have touched a chord.

My first product launch

My first ever product launch was Dhara Kachi Ghani Mustard oil. As a part of my summer internship with GCMMF, I worked on its mustard oil. During my consumer research and field visits, I observed that the target customer in West Bengal preferred a more pungent taste. I recommended a variant. Dhara Kachi Ghani Mustard Oil was later launched by GCMMF after much deliberation and it helped the company to garner a huge market share. I still feel proud that a large organisation such as GCMMF accepted my project recommendation as it showed that they were totally convinced by my insight, research and business case. Maybe that’s the reason they offered me my first job.

A setback I have learnt from

In hindsight, whatever I considered a setback at any given time was actually more of a challenge. There were times when the pricing of a product was a setback but now when I look back, it offered me the challenge of marketing and selling an expensive product successfully. Or other times when a product was way ahead of its time and hence failed – I know if I were to launch that product in that organisation now, it would be a huge success. All these challenges have made me who I am.

My Marketing Idol

I respect brands that have broken convention to get people talking about their activities. A great brand is built not by one man, but by the effort and creativity of an entire team - a group of people.

Amongst all the noise consumers are exposed to, how do you stand out? The answer is innovation! I tip my hat to brands such as Apple, Volkswagen and Gillette for their innovations in media, insights and execution.

HDFC Life has been an innovator by identifying women as a segment with potential for financial products and services. Women have always been natural savers, contrary to popular perception. But not many financial services brand have exclusively targeted this segment.

Where do I get my insights from?

I am an avid reader of books, blogs and random articles. You will find the most amazing information in the most unexpected of places or through a chance encounter.

I believe it is extremely important for every marketing professional to spend some time in the field. That’s when you can actually stop being a marketer and start thinking like a consumer first.

HDFC has a very strong and robust market research and analytics team. We use a lot of behavioural information to generate predictive models that tell us about our customers’ future financial buying patterns. It is something revolutionary in insurance and has paid off for us.

How B-school has helped my career

Undoubtedly, a good B-school is extremely important when trying to build a successful management career. It aligns your thoughts, teaches you to thrash those out in your head, take responsibility, make tough decisions and build habits that are extremely essential for survival in a corporate set up.

IRMA gave me a holistic perspective on the diversities of Indian consumers, marketing and management. The institute, its professors and my peers all had immense respect for India and its diversities and a desire for sustainable development of the rural sector along with urban India.

That thought has stayed with me till date and I have never lost sight of the fact that generalisations will not work in India. It led me to believe in the principle of shared value, which involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges.

However, I must admit that no education system can ever teach you all about the practicalities of sales and marketing which keep evolving over time. My B-school helped me take the initial baby steps but along the way my professional experiences have moulded me into the person I am today.

How to make insurance more appealing

Being in the services industry, an emotional appeal works better than a rational appeal. This is more so the case because one cannot communicate the look and feel of the product when it comes to marketing financial services. Still, your communication has to be different and relevant to your target segment. What you can bank on is the consumer’s emotion. What is imperative at this point is getting customer insight to identify emotion that is crucial and valued by your target group.

We identified dignity and self-respect as a core value as Indians do not wish to be a burden on others in their old age or have their families depend on others in case of eventualities. It is important to link core brand thought across life stage needs when you create communication to make the brand relevant for all life stages like we have done with Sar Uthake Jiyo .

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