MAM
HDFC Standard Life gets a brand makeover
MUMBAI: Ten years into existence, private life insurance company HDFC Standard Life has gone for a brand makeover to make it more ‘relevant‘ and ‘connected‘ with today‘s youth.
The company has rebranded itself as ‘HDFC Life‘ and its brand philosophy ‘Sar Utha ke Jiyo‘ has taken a generation leap.
In the new three dimensional logo, red stands for vibrancy, youthfulness and exuberance, blue for dependability and financial expertise, and dark red for (vermillion) long life.
Says HDFC Standard Life EVP marketing & direct channels Sanjay Tripathy, “India is a young nation. Majority of our population is now below the age of 25 and to continue to be successful, it is imperative to be relevant to the changing lifestyles, values and ambitions of the young Indian consumer. Our new corporate identity is in tune with the changing consumer behaviour. It reflects vibrancy and dynamism, uses colours that resonate the ‘new age‘ values for life insurance, weeds out irrelevant clutter, and adds more clarity and sharpness to the logo. The new identity shares higher synergies with our parent – HDFC Ltd. Inspired by the form and colours of the HDFC brand, our new logo and brand name – HDFC Life – is a symbol of assurance, protection and pride of a life well lived.”
HDFC Life has also launched a new brand campaign, conceptualised by Leo Burnet, to convey its new identity.
Says Leo Burnet National Creative Director K V Sridhar, “Ambition must be rooted in reality. The single largest equity the brand has is, ‘sar utha ke jiyo‘ and the challenge to the team was to refresh that emotion and make it contemporary and young.”
The company‘s new brand campaign is directed by E Niwas. The creative team includes KV Sridhar (Pops), Nitesh Tiwari and Rupesh Kashyap.
Elaborates Leo Burnett ECD Nitesh Tiwari, “Emotions are universal and timeless but every passing generation interprets them differently. Similarly, self respect is as important to me as it was to my father or even his father but our ways of demonstrating them are different. And it is this change that we have attempted to capture in the film.”
Apart from television, the new campaign will be supported by other mediums such as print, radio, OOH, Internet, mobile, and on-ground initiatives.
MAM
Publicis Groupe India launches data-led influencer platform ‘Influential’
A new platform, a seasoned hire and an ambitious plan to bring discipline to India’s booming but chaotic creator economy.
MUMBAI: Influencer marketing in India is big, messy and, for most brands, maddeningly hard to measure. Publicis Groupe India has decided it has had enough of that and is moving to fix it.
The advertising giant has launched Influential, its global creator marketing solution, in India, pairing the rollout with the appointment of Diwaker Chandani as managing partner for Influential India. The brief is blunt: drag influencer marketing out of the spray-and-pray era and into one defined by data, accountability and results that actually show up on a balance sheet.
A fragmented market ripe for disruption
India’s influencer ecosystem has scale in abundance. What it lacks is maturity. Measurement standards are inconsistent, creator databases are riddled with duplication, and brands remain dangerously hooked on organic reach, a strategy that flatters vanity metrics while delivering uncertain commercial returns. Chandani, who brings nearly two decades of experience across digital platforms and media, puts it plainly. “The ecosystem has scale, but not maturity,” he says. “By combining data-led audience intelligence with creator ecosystems and media amplification, we aim to build a model that delivers measurable and repeatable outcomes.”
It is a diagnosis that Publicis Groupe is staking serious infrastructure on. Influential is anchored in the group’s Connected Identity system, which maps consumer profiles to enable more precise audience targeting and creator selection. Layered on top are the Captiv8 platform and Influential’s global creator network, giving brands the tools to plan, activate and measure campaigns across the full funnel, from awareness down to commerce, rather than treating each influencer post as a standalone act of faith.
The hire
Chandani is not an unfamiliar face in the industry. He has held senior roles at Meta, Zee Entertainment and the Network18 Group, working across creator partnerships and content-led media strategies. His mandate at Influential India is to integrate data, creators, media and commerce into a unified framework and to build the team and client roster to scale it.
Anupriya Acharya, chief executive of Publicis Groupe South Asia, frames the launch as a response to a market that has grown faster than its own infrastructure. “The channel has reached scale, but lacks a unified, data-led foundation,” she says. “With Influential, we are moving from a creator-first approach to a cohort-first, identity-led model powered by Connected Identity.” The integration of creators, media and commerce, she adds, will enable more precise and scalable outcomes for brands.
Why now
The timing is deliberate. Influencer marketing in India is expanding rapidly, fuelled by cheap data, a vast and young social-media audience, and brands increasingly willing to redirect budgets away from traditional media. But growth without governance has created a market where consistent returns remain elusive and accountability is largely aspirational. Publicis Groupe is betting that the industry’s next phase belongs not to whoever has the biggest roster of creators, but to whoever can prove, with hard numbers, that those creators are actually shifting product.
The old model of picking a popular face, posting a reel and hoping for the best is running out of road. Influential is Publicis Groupe India’s wager that the future belongs to the spreadsheet as much as the selfie.
