For 25 years, ICICI Lombard has built its brand around a simple promise: Nibhaye Vaade (Keeping Promises). In a category where trust is the primary purchase driver, that proposition has helped the insurer serve over 500 million customers and settle more than 60 million claims, according to ICICI Lombard.

But as customer expectations evolve, so too must the meaning of trust.

To mark its silver jubilee, the company has unveiled 25 ‘customer-first innovations’ spanning health, motor, home, travel and commercial insurance. These include AI-powered underwriting, conversational voice AI, a digital insurance branch inside Mumbai's Siddhivinayak Metro station, and products such as Elevate Her, Paw Care and Complete Home Protect, among others.

Together, they reflect a shift from offering protection to helping customers anticipate, manage and recover from risks through technology-led experiences.

For ICICI Lombard, that doesn't mean moving away from Nibhaye Vaade. Instead, the brand is adapting how it communicates the idea through hyper-personalised storytelling, digital-first campaigns and culturally relevant narratives such as its gaming-inspired ‘Game of Life’ campaign for Millennials and Gen Z. Its media strategy similarly balances traditional and digital channels, with digital leading performance marketing and self-service journeys.

Most recently, its 25 Years of Keeping Promises campaign, built around an origami bird and a message of gratitude, focuses on customers' trust rather than the company's milestone.

In an earlier conversation with Manifest (November 2025), Sheena Kapoor, head - marketing, corporate communications and CSR, ICICI Lombard, spoke about improving insurance penetration through education, digital storytelling and gamification.

This time, as ICICI Lombard marks 25 years, the conversation shifts to how the brand is keeping trust relevant in the AI era, engaging Gen Z, balancing media investments, and why customer experience is becoming one of marketing's biggest differentiators.

Edited excerpts:

ICICI Lombard has spent 25 years building trust around the Nibhaye Vaade brand philosophy. As you enter the next chapter, what does the brand need to stand for beyond trust, especially for younger consumers who expect speed, transparency and digital-first experiences?

Our philosophy of Nibhaye Vaade, 'fulfilling promises rather than just making them', remains our North Star and won't change. Trust is still implicit in everything we do, but the way we communicate it evolves depending on the audience.

For younger consumers, the proposition, tonality and storytelling are different. Our 'Game of Life' campaign, for example, was designed for Millennials and Gen Z by using gaming as a metaphor for life's uncertainties and positioning insurance as a support system. We also personalise communication based on customer cohorts, whether they're long-term policyholders or first-time renewals. Messaging, targeting and media are all customised, but trust remains constant.

As you celebrate 25 years, what marketing strategy have you moved away from, and what have you embraced?

Every campaign starts with a clear business objective, whether it's driving awareness, launching a product or delivering conversions. From there, storytelling, media planning and measurement follow.

Our communication has to be differentiated, ownable and relevant. We've moved away from some high-investment awareness initiatives after reassessing their business impact and redirected those investments towards product-led communication. With strong brand recall already established, we're focusing more on showcasing differentiated offerings such as Elevate Her and supporting sales teams with sharper product marketing.

You have launched 25 innovations together. Why now, and how will consumers learn about them?

The anniversary provided the right opportunity to bring all the innovations together and introduce them to the market.

Rather than advertising all 25 equally, we will focus marketing investments on hero innovations such as Elevate Her, while earned media, our website and nationwide agent outreach will help educate customers on the innovations. From tomorrow, we'll begin an extensive sales drive across India to familiarise both retail and corporate agents with these recent innovations.

Has your media mix changed over the years? Where are you seeing the highest ROI?

From an investment perspective, our mix is broadly balanced between traditional and digital media because television remains important for large-scale brand campaigns. Our 25 Years of Keeping Promises campaign, for example, needed national reach.

Performance marketing, however, is heavily digital. Consumers increasingly purchase, renew and manage policies through digital channels, while also accessing preventive healthcare services. Our proposition today is completely digital, paperless and designed around faster customer experiences.

We're not just competing with insurers anymore. Hospitality, QSRs and quick commerce have changed customer expectations. If consumers expect groceries or furniture in minutes, we also have to rethink how insurance services are delivered.

Your 25 Years of Keeping Promises campaign is centred on gratitude rather than celebrating a business milestone. Why?

The campaign is a tribute to the customers and wider ecosystem that have trusted us over the past 25 years.

Everything about the storytelling was built around gratitude. The origami bird became the central character, travelling through different insurance scenarios while representing the promises we've kept. We also created a Shukrana (thankfulness) song to express our gratitude to the more than 500 million customers we've served.

With generative AI becoming common in advertising, how do you avoid AI fatigue?

The human touch remains essential and is key. Our 25th anniversary brand film was created using AI, but the focus wasn't on showcasing AI. It was about telling the brand's story authentically.

We don't rely on generic prompts or stock imagery. We use different tools, prompts and storytelling approaches while ensuring the underlying consumer insight remains strong. The film showcasing our 25 innovations follows the same origami-inspired visual language established in the anniversary campaign, creating consistency across the brand.

Looking ahead, what's one marketing bet you're willing to make that others may still hesitate to?

We've consistently embraced new technologies early. In 2023, we launched what we believe was the first fully AI-generated advertising campaign across categories in India. We followed that with an AI-generated campaign for TripSecure+ travel insurance that integrated product messaging into an original song on Spotify.

Every campaign begins with research, focus group discussions and internal deliberation before creative development. There's a combination of art, science and rigour behind every decision, and that's what ultimately creates enduring brand communication.