PhonePe’s new marketing campaign aims to revive long lost truck art
Bengaluru: Digital payments platform PhonePe has piloted a truck art campaign to promote its two and four-wheeler insurance products.
As part of the campaign, a fleet of trucks plying on highways in Maharashtra, covering Pune, Nashik and Mumbai, will have catchy phrases on art canvases on their tailgates.
The company aims to engage with the target audience on highways in the A&B categories as per New Consumer Classification System (NCCS), who are in the age group of 22-40 years.
Truck art, often known as ‘phool patti’ in Hindi and Urdu, has traditionally been a popular art form in India and other parts of South Asia. The trucks are lovingly decorated by their drivers, who spend their days and nights driving them through the length and breadth of the country. Decked in vibrant colours and bells, inscribed with romantic and often quirky couplets and even images of celebrities and famous personalities, each truck tells a unique tale.
Trucks in India often have a beautiful display of interesting slogans, decorative articles and countless convoluted symbols. They are also a melting pot of the influences of different cultures, usually with a melange of colour schemes, fonts, and symbols on display.
“In the decades gone by, trucks often used to have images of demons to ward off evil. We spoke to a few veteran truck drivers and truck art experts who said that drivers used to believe that these images of demons protect them from untoward incidents on the road. When insurance for trucks wasn’t well understood or adopted, this provided mental assurance and ‘insurance’ of sorts to drivers,” said Ramesh Srinivasan, Director Brand Marketing, PhonePe.
But, with the arrival of transportation companies and their large fleets of modern trucks with containers, traditional truck art is on the decline. Stickers, plastic and steel ornaments have replaced the tedious work of painting by hand. The new generation truck owners also seem uninterested in learning the art of painting trucks.
Even as most insurance companies in India choose traditional mediums such as print, TV and outdoor for advertising, PhonePe aims to experiment with the truck art as a medium to build awareness and preference for its motor insurance products.
With the new campaign the company also aims to break the clutter and create an impactful campaign. PhonePe’s campaign will have quirky idioms that people would love to read while driving on the highways, and will also bring to life a forgotten art form.
“We believe that trucks are a great medium to educate consumers about the importance of two and four-wheeler insurance as the use for insurance is felt the most when one is driving on the road,” Ramesh said.
“We believe that this campaign will be very contextual and seamlessly extend itself on the back of these trucks which can be easily noticed by drivers of two and four-wheelers. This also helps in the message manifesting at the point of truth — highways and the roads,” he added.
