It’s trying to get India to go cashless through their latest offering Pockets - a comprehensive e-wallet which allows cashless payment across online stores. Talking about this ‘Pocket bank’, Sujit Ganguli, Senior General Manager and Head - Corporate Brand and Communications Group, ICICI Bank also shares insights on the launch of its ad campaign.
By NEETA NAIR
Q] What was the thought behind Pockets – ICICI bank’s e-wallet campaign? And what is the target audience?
We have always been leaders in technology solutions and banking, right from ATMs to net banking solutions in the 90s to the first mobile banking solution in the industry in 2008. We popularized both, so we have been offering meaningful and innovative solutions for our customers. Before the launch of Pockets in February, we found that the youth wanted an instrument they can use to transact in a quick and easy manner. So while we had iMobile which is a banking application for our customers linked to their savings account. However, our research found that the youngsters needed something which is easy to use and easy to download but not necessarily linked to their savings account. So we launched Pockets which is the most comprehensive wallet of its time. Through this you can book a show, pay bills do a person to person money transfer, split bills, e-commerce shopping etc which other wallets in the market don’t provide. Even though the wallet is from ICICI, anyone from any age group can download and use it instantly. You don’t need to have an ICICI bank account for it.
Q] But how will that help the bank? Hasn’t the agenda always been to convince the customer to switch to your bank?
We are a consumer focused organization, for us as the philosophy is ‘where the customer is’ and we will have to marry that with our objective. We can’t only do what is beneficial to us without understanding the consumer trend. The consumer trend today is to have easy to use payment solutions for low ticket transactions which are loosely called wallets now. And as per the RBI rule, none of the wallets can facilitate a transaction of more than Rs 10,000 per month, so the security concerns are fewer. Young people seem to prefer this growing eco-system. Now if the customer has become comfortable with the app and wants to use it with more money as a regular savings account, then you just need to send a notification through the app and we will send somebody to pick up your documentation and link it to an ICICI Pockets savings account. It would be a zero bank account with many benefits.
Q] How many people have upgraded to a Pocket savings account?
We have just started promoting the app in the past two-three months, so it would be too early to say how many people have converted to the Pockets savings account. What’s more important is that we are the only bank with such offerings to have crossed two million downloads. Our objective is not to make people use it and convert them in the very first month; our focus is to communicate our proposition and get a large number of people to use it.
Q] What is the marketing mix for this campaign?
Communication of the features and the imagery is very appealing to the youth, the jingle used is sung by Mika which has become very popular. The catchy jingle ‘don’t take load, do the download’, depicting youngsters in the video is best suited for television. At the time of launch, we had done a huge burst of print campaign and a television campaign for building imagery and awareness. We are now running a sustained digital campaign to drive downloads. Basically if the idea is to get people to download an app, then there should be a reminder on the place of download i.e. the same forum.
Q] You have had some very successful campaigns in the past such as Khayal Aapka. To what level has favourable marketing strategy helped ICICI as a brand?
Our brand is built on a few factors like service, huge physical presence of our branches and ATMs and on all the communications that we regularly do to keep our customers in the loop. In the ad with Amitabh Bachchan (Khayal Aapka), for the very first time a bank was telling customers that we will come to you to collect your documentation and not the other way around. This was a technology proposition which we could have chosen not to highlight through ads. But the moment a brand comes out and makes a large statement above the line, two things happen- awareness shoots up the roof immediately which may otherwise take two three years to build; and second, there is a huge amount of image boost that you get, wherein the customer feels the brand is taking care of me and the brand is technologically savvy to bring new solutions to me. Brand communication plays a key role in conveying our proposition at a mass level across the country.
Q] You had two of the most influential brand ambassadors - Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan. How much have they contributed in adding value to the brand?
Ultimately the consumer will narrow down on the proposition and what’s in it for him or her. A brand ambassador like Amitabh Bachchan, who we have huge regard for, definitely helps us to break through the clutter and put forth the message better. The recall of the commercial is higher because of our brand ambassadors but ultimately our proposition also needs to make sense to the consumer.
Q] How much have the ad-spends in the digital medium increased over the years? What percentage of the ad spends is it now?
Today digital spends are a little lesser than half of the overall marketing spends. Couple of years ago, the spends were not so sophisticated. A lot of it would be plain advertisement and collecting basic customer data as leads. Now we are driving downloads of Pockets and iMobile and doing online sales of some of our products. The methods have also become far more sophisticated. In the past three or four years we also started a social media vertical but while the spends are low there, it has become a huge tool for being in touch with our customers and fans especially Facebook and Twitter where I believe we are way ahead of other banks.
Q] Do you think digital wallets like Paytm which claim to have over 100 million users will give banks a run for their money?
The competition will definitely hot up in the payments space because it is going to see many more technologically led nimble footed players entering. But if you see ICICI and some other leading banks as well, they have not exactly been lacking in technology. You can do all transactions via machines and skip manual interaction. From mobile banking, M-visa, contact-less credit card payments, we have done and will continue to do a lot of innovations in the payments space. Yes, there are a great many people who will challenge us but we have also risen to the occasion all the time.
ABOUT THE BRAND
ICICI Bank Ltd (NYSE:IBN) is India’s largest private sector bank with consolidated total assets of US $132.17 billion at March 31, 2015. ICICI Bank’s subsidiaries include India’s leading private sector insurance companies and among its largest securities brokerage firms, mutual funds and private equity firms. ICICI Bank’s presence currently spans 17 countries, including India. ICICI Bank services its large customer base through a multi-channel delivery network of 4052 branches, 12811 ATMs call center, internet banking, mobile banking, banking on Facebook, Twitter and ‘Pockets’.
FACTS
CREATIVE AGENCY: OGILVY & MATHER
CMO FILE
Sujit Ganguli joined ICICI Bank Limited in September 2010. He is the Senior General Manager and Head – Corporate Brand and Communications Group and is thus incharge of ICICI Bank’s brand, media, digital advertising, market research and external and internal corporate communications portfolio. Prior to this, Sujit worked in ICICI Prudential Life Insurance from January 2005 till August of 2010. He was the SVP and Head – Marketing, and looked after Brand and Communications. Additionally
MARKETING TIP
Technology and youth are giving rise to new things everyday and as marketers we always need to be in touch with those trends. Be in touch with the outside world because there is a new trend coming up every day.
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