Aegon Religare makes a footballer out of a baby

After rolling out its launch campaign KILB and a campaign to promote its pension plans, Aegon Religare has unveiled its latest brand communication, this time to highlight its 'Star Child Plans'. The campaign has been created by the company's AoR Contract Advertising. Campaign India caught up with Manish Bhatt and Raghu Bhat, executive creative directors at Contract, to know more about the campaign.

Speaking about the brief received from the client, Bhatt said, "The aim was to launch Aegon Religare's Child Plan in a big way. We were exposed to many rich 'parent-child' insights but we also had freedom to leverage any insight that could lead to great creative."

Added Bhat, "All of us, including the client were very clear we wanted  something as impactful as the KILB and Pension campaigns."

Watch the TVC here:

Aegon Religare from Campaign India on Vimeo.

The commercial begins with an 18 month old baby shown to make cool moves with a football, to background music. The VO then tells the viewers, that parents want to make their child a footballer, then why not invest in its future with Religare's Star Child Plans?

Commenting about his expectations from the campaign as a client, Pradeep Pandey, director, branding and communication, Aegon Religare Life Insurance said, "At Aegon Religare, we have always wanted to stay true to our objectives and our campaigns are an extension of this. Our latest campaign for Child Plans reflect the mindset that today's parents sport. They play a role of 'financial-enablers', so to speak, and give their children the freedom to do what they want to, with their careers. Hence, they live their own dreams through their children's lives."

Says Bhat, "The communication objective was to remind parents that every child is a potential star, in a very compelling manner. But to realize that potential, every parent needs a plan. For the tone of voice, we used what we call, 'gentle provocation'. But in this category, you can't be too pushy nor too passive."

Pandey says, that the brand expects saliency out of the campaign, in addition to breaking the clutter in the category. "We aim to stand out amidst the clutter with a completely different execution of the campaign."

Elaborating on the execution of the campaign, Bhatt says, "Mozart played a piano at the age of four. Agassi used to hit tennis balls from his cradle. Personally, we are fans of babies. We think they are more intelligent, fun and better company than most adults we know. We are also soccer fans. So why not mix the two? After all, it is a child plan we are advertising."
 
Said Bhat, "The last two campaigns of Aegon Religare used Irrfan Khan and an interesting dialogue to get the message through. This time, we wanted a zero-dialogue film that is shareable and could charm the pants off people!"
 
Bhatt says, "The execution was very painstaking and ulcer-inducing. Experts from six countries including France, China and Singapore have worked on this campaign. We photographed real babies in total detail. Using that information, grayscale babies were created. They were then animated to replicate complex actions. Then, these actions were imbued with 'babyishness' - another mind-numbing process. This was important because babies can't be too certain and definitive in their moments. After all this, the skin and expressions were grafted. The whole thing lasted for about three and a half months."

Pandey said, that the media mix will include TV, print, digital, radio and outdoor. The digital campaign will include promotion of the Star Child Plans on social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, in addition to a specially created microsite. This leg of the campaign will kick off sometime this week.

The creative team behind the campaign includes Ravi Deshpande, Bhatt and Bhat. The film has been shot by Shiven Surendranath of Old School Films. The animation has been carried out at VHQ, Singapore.