From street plays in rural Uttar Pradesh to AI-driven personalization for Gen Z, Axis Max Life Insurance is reshaping how Indians engage with life insurance. Rahul Talwar, CMO, Axis Max Life Insurance, talks about building trust through emotionally intelligent storytelling, balancing traditional and digital media, localizing for diverse cultural contexts, and using financial literacy as a brand responsibility. He shares why the next big opportunity lies in making insurance intuitive, inclusive, and emotionally resonant for every Indian.
Edited excerpts:
Life insurance is still a low-penetration category in India. How is Axis Max Life approaching marketing to drive awareness and category adoption?
Life insurance has traditionally faced a perception challenge in India – it is seen more as a tax-saving tool than a long-term protection solution. At Axis Max Life, our approach to marketing begins with changing this narrative, using emotionally intelligent storytelling and data-driven precision to drive both awareness and adoption. Our communication is rooted in trust and purpose.
We focus on life-stage-led narratives -- be it planning for retirement, securing a child’s future, or navigating income disruption, so that customers relate insurance to real life, not just policies. We deploy an integrated marketing strategy that blends full-funnel digital, performance, and ATL/BTL outreach. We personalize at scale using AI, generative tools, and cohort insights from proprietary studies like the India Protection Quotient and the India Retirement Index, helping us tailor messaging for Gen Z, women, rural India, and the LGBTQIA+ community.
Our goal is to move the category from transactional to transformational, making insurance feel accessible, human, and empowering for every Indian. To address the low-penetration challenge, especially in rural areas, Axis Max Life has launched a large-scale rural activation campaign under its 'Bharosa Talks - India Protection Quotient 7.0 - Rural Edition' platform. This initiative, which is part of our role as the lead insurer for Uttar Pradesh under the IRDAI's State Insurance Plan, aims to expand life insurance awareness across 50 villages in the Unnao and Baghpat districts. This on-ground outreach is designed to engage directly with rural audiences, including farmers and villagers. We use culturally rooted interventions like nukkad nataks (street plays), storytelling, and community baithaks. The campaign also involves influential local voices such as village pradhans, teachers, doctors, and women from self help groups (SHG) to create a multiplier effect within the rural ecosystem. These efforts reinforce our commitment to building last-mile insurance awareness in one of India's most populous states, bringing insurance into the local context.
What does your current media mix look like, and how are you balancing traditional platforms like TV with digital-first campaigns?
Our media strategy at Axis Max Life Insurance is grounded in a core principle: being screen-agnostic and consumer-first. We've built a hybrid mix that blends the trust and extensive reach of traditional platforms like television with the precision and performance analytics of digital channels. This approach allows us to effectively navigate the evolving media landscape and meet our audience where they are.
Television remains a vital channel, especially for building category-level trust and reaching a broad audience during significant brand moments. Campaigns such as 'Bharosa Tum Ho' and 'Double Bharosa' were rolled out across high-impact TV properties, helping to reinforce our brand message at scale. However, digital platforms command a great part of our media investments, with a significant focus on performance marketing, AI-led personalization and influencer marketing.
Connected TV is also a crucial part of our media mix allowing us to reach our core target audience of high-affluence users. Our strategy has a strong vernacular focus, allowing us to index higher in specific regions that show greater business growth opportunities. This allows us to tailor our messaging to resonate more deeply with local audiences. We also practice cohort-specific targeting, creating campaigns designed for particular demographic groups like women, Gen Z, and Millennials. Furthermore, our media strategy incorporates sharp shooting within the e-commerce funnel, enabling precise targeting and optimization to drive conversions efficiently.
Each campaign is evaluated through a full-funnel lens, considering brand awareness, engagement, lead quality, and long-term brand equity. The goal is not to abandon traditional media, but to ensure every platform complements the others, delivering a consistent and cohesive message across the entire customer journey and building lasting trust with our audience.
With regional markets growing, how do you tailor communication to connect with diverse linguistic and cultural audiences?
At Axis Max Life, our communication strategy is centred on deep localization to tap into the next wave of opportunity in Indian life insurance: regional markets. We understand that language and culture are not just translation challenges but emotional touchpoints. Our approach goes beyond simple language adaptation, focusing on regional values, life-stage nuances, and socio-cultural aspirations. We craft campaigns with regional voiceovers, dialect-specific scripts, and storytelling rooted in local traditions, whether through street-play formats in villages or digital narratives on platforms like ShareChat and Moj, to show up authentically in context.
To further our reach and credibility, we forge tie-ups with regional influencers. This strategy leverages their authentic voices to connect with audiences on a more personal level, as they are trusted figures within their communities. These partnerships ensure our messaging feels less like a corporate campaign and more like a genuine recommendation from a local who understands their needs.
Our media mix is highly region-specific. For instance, we may over-index on platforms and channels popular in the South of India to gain a greater share of voice and mind in those key markets. This allows us to strategically concentrate our marketing efforts on regions that are not only business-critical but also present a high category opportunity. We also use data from proprietary research, such as the India Protection Quotient, to understand the financial behavior of rural and semi-urban audiences. This helps us design tailored messaging for specific groups like self-help group-linked women, first-time earners, and regional cohorts, making insurance feel culturally relevant and accessible.
To support this, we have also invested in a multilingual servicing infrastructure. Our WhatsApp chatbot, Mili, for example, supports seven regional languages, ensuring a seamless and inclusive experience for both pre-sale and post-sale engagement.
With customers increasingly researching online before buying, how do you optimize your digital presence and storytelling across platforms?
Today's customers are informed, discerning, and digitally empowered. Before making a decision, especially in a high-involvement category like life insurance, they research, compare, and validate across multiple platforms. At Axis Max Life, we see this shift as an opportunity to transform our digital presence from a series of transactional touchpoints into an immersive brand experience. Our digital strategy is designed to meet customers at every stage of their journey, from discovery to decision, with content that is contextual, personalized, and purposeful.
As a category specialist brand, we understand that each person's needs are different based on their income, life stage, and personal goals. We operate at the intersection of our brand, the insurance category, and our consumers, which allows us to offer personalized solutions. We optimize platforms not just for visibility but for trust-building, using a blend of AI-driven personalization, performance marketing, and value-led storytelling.
Our storytelling is a cornerstone of our strategy, designed to resonate with our audience and consistently pulsate across social media and TV. We use celebrity-oriented storytelling for top-of-funnel campaigns to capture broad attention and build brand awareness. To foster deeper connections, we partner with influencers to build community-oriented credibility and engage audiences on a more personal level.
Each platform plays a specific role. For instance, Google Search and SEO-optimized content ensure product discoverability, while platforms like YouTube and Connected TV help us bring emotional narratives to life. Our chatbot, Mili, offers real-time query resolution in seven languages, enabling seamless decision-making, especially for first-time buyers.
Do you see financial literacy and awareness campaigns as part of your marketing responsibility?
Absolutely. In a category like life insurance, where awareness remains low and misconceptions are common, financial literacy is not just a responsibility, it is a strategic imperative. At Axis Max Life, marketing is not about pushing products. It is about simplifying complex financial decisions and helping people understand the role of protection in their lives.
Initiatives like the India Protection Quotient and India Retirement Index Study have helped us decode consumer mindsets, identify gaps, and tailor educational efforts across segments. Our rural activations, storytelling-led campaigns, and platforms like Bharosa Talks have created approachable spaces for dialogue on financial preparedness.
Ultimately, when customers understand the value of insurance, they engage more meaningfully. Financial literacy, therefore, is not separate from brand building, it is what strengthens trust and deepens long-term relationships.
What do you see as the next big opportunity for life insurance marketing in the next 2–3 years?
The next big opportunity lies in making insurance more intuitive, inclusive, and emotionally resonant—especially for younger, digitally native audiences. With Gen Z entering the financial ecosystem and regional markets expanding rapidly, life insurance marketing needs to evolve from explanation to personalization at scale.
Generative AI, Connected TV, and vernacular storytelling will allow brands to deliver deeply contextual content across platforms. Equally important is building trust through purpose-led campaigns, simplified messaging, and inclusive narratives that address diverse cohorts, be it women, the LGBTQIA+ community, or rural consumers.
At Axis Max Life, we believe the future of marketing lies in insight-led segmentation, immersive engagement, and lifetime value thinking. The brands that will win are those that help customers not just buy insurance but truly understand and believe in its role across every life stage.
How do you see influencer marketing, brand partnerships, or experiential initiatives shaping the category?
Influencer marketing, brand partnerships, and experiential initiatives are helping reshape how people relate to life insurance, by making the category more human, contextual, and culturally relevant. At Axis Max Life, we view these levers not just as amplification tools, but as storytelling bridges that help simplify a high-involvement product.
Influencers bring trust and relatability to the conversation, especially when we focus on life-stage themes like planning for children or retirement. Our campaigns like “Bharosa Ab Ho Gaya Double” used real voices and lived experiences to deliver authenticity, not scripted messaging. We’re also seeing strong results from micro-influencer and vernacular creator engagement, especially in Tier 2 and 3 markets.
How has Axis Max Life’s marketing budget allocation evolved in the last few years?
Axis Max Life’s marketing investments have evolved from primarily brand-building to a more balanced, full-funnel strategy driven by data, digital adoption, and contextual storytelling. Today, our allocation blends always on digital engagement with high-impact seasonal bursts.
Digital commands a growing share of the mix, thanks to its measurability and precision. However, traditional media like TV and print remain important for brand trust and regional impact, especially during large-scale brand moments. Insurance has long sales cycles.
How do you evaluate ROI from your campaigns—immediate leads, long-term brand trust, or policy conversions?
Evaluating ROI in life insurance marketing requires a dual-lens approach, balancing short-term metrics with long-term brand building. At Axis Max Life, our campaigns are measured not just by lead volumes or conversions, but by how effectively they move the customer through the entire decision journey.
We look at immediate indicators like lead intent, quote completion, and cost per acquisition, especially during peak periods like tax season. But equally important are mid- and long-funnel metrics, ad recall, message association, NPS lift, and search query growth, all of which reflect growing trust and relevance. We also track cohort behaviour over time using CRM-linked campaign attribution and retargeting performance. This allows us to assess how storytelling impacts policy consideration and eventual purchase. In a category like ours, true ROI isn’t just about today’s conversions, it's about building tomorrow’s confidence.
How does your brand strategy balance functional benefits (returns, protection) with emotional storytelling around security and family well-being?
For us at Axis Max Life, functional and emotional messaging are not two separate levers; they work best when they reinforce each other. Life insurance is inherently about planning for the future, but what drives that decision is an emotional trigger: the desire to protect loved ones, preserve dignity, and secure aspirations.
Our campaigns are rooted in this balance. For instance, while we communicate product benefits like predictable returns or term protection, we try to connect with the target audience by addressing pivotal life moments that carry deep emotional connect, from retirement and parenthood to unexpected income disruptions.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
