Why did Acko bring Munna Bhai and Circuit back to life?

Vikram Pandey, national creative director, Leo Burnett, shares the creative work behind Acko's 'Health Insurance ki Subah ho gayi Maamu' campaign

Advertisements in the health insurance category frequently rely on familiar tropes that people can easily recognise. These tropes often involve showcasing an individual facing a stressful health situation or contemplating their insurance choices.

However, when Acko, a seven-year-old general insurance company, introduced its latest product in this segment, the Acko Platinum Health Plan, they aimed to break away from these conventional clichés.

The idea stemmed from the company's belief in the transformative potential of their product in changing how health insurance is perceived in India. The plan encompasses six key features, such as 100% bill coverage, no room rent limitations, and zero waiting periods, among others.

After understanding the uniqueness of the insurance plan, Vikram Pandey, the national creative director at Leo Burnett, Acko's creative agency, asserts that a generic insurance ad campaign couldn't have done justice to it. He felt that the 100% bill coverage among other features translates to the fact that it basically challenged the norms of health insurance itself. 

Thus, the team looked to create a campaign featuring characters that could challenge norms. "That's when we realised that no two characters have a more pronounced reputation for challenging the norms of society itself than Munna Bhai and Circuit. In the film, Munna Bhai M.B.B.S.,' they challenged the healthcare system. In the second film, Lage Raho Munna Bhai, they challenged the very fabric of society, by introducing the concept of 'Gandhigiri'. Thus, we felt that it would be a great idea to bring them in to challenge the norms of the insurance sector," he shares.

The characters, created and written by filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani, oversimplify the way we go about our day-to-day lives. That's one of the many reasons why they are so iconic and recognisable to multiple generations of audiences.

It also gave the team a lot of fodder to build a campaign on. But, Pandey shares that while there was mutual agreement on the idea, there were doubts about whether it could even be turned into a reality.

A third instalment in the Munna Bhai series has been in development on and off for a while now, as the makers continue to find ways to do justice to the characters' legacy. Cognisant of this, the team initially thought of alternatives. 

These included different people filling in for Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi as Munna-Circuit or the actors playing the roles differently. "None of the alternatives seemed convincing. We knew that a half-hearted effort on this campaign would not bring us the desired results that we were looking for," he says.

Pandey reveals that the doubts about getting the cast were dispelled when the team approached Hirani. He got on board with the idea and even helped the team facilitate their conversations with Dutt and Warsi.

The collaboration led to six short ad films for the campaign titled 'Acko health hai na Maamu.'

The script for the campaign was developed jointly by Ashish Sharma, executive creative director at Leo Burnett; Sagar Parab, associate executive creative director at Leo Burnett, and Pandey. 

He says that the trio grew up on Bollywood Cinema, and the process of ideation and finalising the script, along with Hirani, was a very exhilarating experience. The script and dialogue that the trio came up with saw improvisations, which Pandey calls improvements, with Hirani's inputs.

The ads feature some iconic dialogue lines from both films. "The campaign would have been incomplete without the carrom and juice scene," Pandey opines.

The ad does bid to change the way health insurance is advertised. Having Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi portray one of their most iconic characters has not been done before and hence, stood out. It also added to the growing trend of celebrities playing characters or acting in certain situations that are associated with them.

"In India, the way we use celebrities in ads has to improve. We should move away from the stereotypical ads with celebrities. It now needs to be more creative to stand out," Pandey opines.