The role of SBI Life as the lead helmet partner of Rajasthan Royals Franchise is not just a branding opportunity – SBI Life’s Ravindra Sharma

The seasoned marketer takes us through his approach to new-age marketing and thoughts over the association with Rajasthan Royals Franchise.

Ravindra Sharma, Chief of Brand, Corporate Communications & CSR at SBI Life Insurance, the professional marketer with more than 24 years of rich experience shares his understanding and thoughts over the recent partnership with the Rajasthan Royals Franchise.

Ravindra Sharma is an experienced marketer in the financial services industry and is responsible for developing marketing strategies, campaigns, and activities both offline and online at SBI Life Insurance. His experience comes from working with various insurance companies as well. Sharma believes in leading strong teams to achieve high consumer satisfaction and identifying opportunities for business growth.

In an interview with afaqs!, he shares his thoughts over the recent partnership with Rajasthan Royals, application of innovative PR strategies to stand out among the clutter of brands that are active during the sporting festival, maintain balance between various other traditional PR tools, advertising, social media and influencer marketing tools and allocate marketing resources - a refreshing take from a veteran marketer.

Edited excerpts:

As a cricket enthusiast, I see our role as the lead helmet partner as someone who liberates and protects. As soon as the player puts on his helmet, he is free from the fear of any setbacks and is liberated to achieve the team goal which so resonates with our brand purpose of liberating individuals to pursue their aspirations while taking care of familial responsibilities.

Being a lead helmet partner, SBI Life aims to showcase its commitment of protecting the larger populace and promoting the importance of safety and life protection. Moreover, this strategic association is a symbol of liberation, protection, resilience and courage, and this alliance reinforces its image as an enabler and trustworthy partner and not just a branding opportunity. We hope the visibility offered by the sport will go a long way in spreading awareness about the importance of protection offered by insurance.

While the association provides branding opportunities, it also allows us to connect with a massive audience across the country. At SBI Life, our main objective through this partnership is to impress the importance of protection through insurance. To let the message, reach the masses across demographies & geographies, we relied heavily on innovative PR strategies to stand out among the clutter of brands that are active during the sporting festival. We took the below efforts to connect with today’s audience in an innovative way:

• We unveiled a larger-than-life-size helmet installation at Sawai Mansingh Stadium, the home ground of Rajasthan Royals in Jaipur. The helmet installation, measuring an impressive 15 feet in height and 18 feet in width, prominently placed right at the entrance of the stadium is a visual treat for the visiting cricket fans and also the larger populace around the city. With its grand scale and unique design, the helmet installation has been a crowd puller and conversation starter

• Soon after the unveiling of this giant helmet installation which became the talk of the town, local radio stations, news outlets, social media influencers, everyone started spurring conversations around the unique initiative. On ground conversations helped in further spreading a word around the importance of protection among the growing cricketing fan base, by associating it with their favourite sport.

• To further stress upon the need for protection, we associated with the Jaipur Traffic Police to host a public awareness drive to aid helmet adoption in the Pink City. Representatives of the Jaipur Traffic Police along with SBI Life’s team also distributed free helmets to motorist impressing upon the role of ‘protection as an enabler’ for individuals to pursue their dreams, thus encouraging a behavioural change to make ‘protection’ a priority

Overall, we’ve leveraged multiple PR tools to ensure that SBI Life’s association with Rajasthan Royals stands out from the clutter of brand that are vying for consumer attention. The meaningful conversations help impress upon the role of protection, through engaging content, on-ground activations, digital engagements, social media campaigns, and more.