Rajat Mehta, President & Country Head - Brand, Digital & Retail Marketing, Yes Bank, talks about the brand’s recently launched ‘India bole YES’ campaign and how it associates with the spirit of a new and optimistic India. Yes Bank will spend Rs 10-12 crore in the first burst of communication for the campaign
By SALONI DUTTA
Yes Bank recently announced the launch of its brand campaign ‘India bole YES’ on the completion of its 11th year in India. The brand will spend around Rs 10-12 crore in the first burst of communication for the campaign for a two-to-three month period, with 40% of the spends going to Print, 40% to TV, and around 20% to Outdoor. According to Rajat Mehta, President & Country Head-Brand, Digital & Retail Marketing, Yes Bank, “The current spends are more like the first burst of the campaign, which we plan to execute over the next 10 weeks. And then gauging how the overall markets are, how the campaign has taken off - since it is an outcome-based campaign as well - we will either deepen this campaign or re-evaluate it. But the first thrust is about Rs 10-12 crore.”
The creative agency behind the first leg of the campaign is Triton Communications, which also handles the conventional media planning for the brand. The digital agency is iProspect Communicate2 for digital implementation and Windchimes is the social media agency. Outdoor agency partners for the campaign are Star OOH. The big insight behind the campaign is that Indians are extremely positive about their future, which is reflected in the Consumer Confidence Index recently released by Nielsen, which tracks consumer confidence across 100 countries and India has been ranked Number One on it consistently. “That was one very big insight about growth, development, positivity that really all Indians associate with. As a bank our mission is to partner our consumers in their growth and development,” adds Mehta.
To add to the overall awareness, Yes Bank also associates with larger properties like IPL, being the five-year partner of BCCI for IPL. Over the last two to three years, this has helped Yes Bank become a household name with awareness scores rising significantly, from the mid-60s to the late 80s and a lot of that growth has come from smaller towns which the bank is now targeting. Emphasising on the growth plans for the coming year, Mehta says, “NCR and MMR are the most important markets for us.
About 50-55% of our 700 branches would be in these regions. Even a year ago, 95% of our spends used to be focussed on Mumbai and Delhi, but now we are going to other state capitals, and it makes sense because we are going to invest there and we are seeing consumers being receptive to our brand.”
The bank is also focussing a lot on digital, for engagement and acquisition. “We do a lot of our acquisitions now on digital. About a year ago, we were at about 2-3% and now we are already at about 10-12% on digital acquisitions. So the base is growing and we have grown five times of that,” says Mehta. “Yes Bank is the world’s highest followed bank on Twitter with 5.5 lakh odd followers and on Facebook it is the second fastest growing bank in the world with 2.2 odd million followers, according to a Simplify360 report. The report also says that not only the numbers, but engagement rates on Twitter are the best in the industry, which is 40%, whereas most other banks have 2-3%.”
Q] What were the insights that led to the ‘India bole YES’ campaign?
We started out almost 11 years ago with a brand name like Yes, which was very different in the banking space and has a contemporary, almost FMCG-ish sort of connotation. The thought process then, and it has only got reinforced, was that we wanted to create a bank which is optimistic, positive and there for the consumers as a partner. As the Nielsen survey on consumer confidence indicates, the youth today has the highest amount of faith in the country and in their future and with that as a backdrop, the insight was to talk to a generation which is saying yes to opportunities, and hence ‘India bole YES’.
Q] What is the media mix at play for the campaign?
We launched this campaign on Twitter around Independence Day with a digital first strategy and had an amazing run there with something called ‘Raise the Flag’. We encouraged Indians to raise the Indian flag and this campaign garnered 8 million impressions and reached out to about 4.5 million Indians across the world.
The ‘India Bole YES’ campaign is now launched on Print, Television, and Outdoor, across 18 cities, including Delhi, Mumbai and 16 state capitals. And we are now going to take it BTL in a big way through our flagship property called Yes Community, where we reach out to consumers through our branches and brand serving areas. And the other thing that we will do under this umbrella is a lot of positivity campaigns, with media houses or government agencies or NGOs, essentially using our partnerships to see how we can build on the confidence in the neighbourhood, in the larger community, which will have a positive resonating effect on the brand. That is more at the BTL level, but overall digital is our big focus, so whether it is NRIs, or young professionals, business owners or SMEs, under this we want to drive the whole point of being a partner in the success that each individual is striving for.
Q] How does the campaign live up to the innovative work done by Yes Bank in the past?
We launched it on Twitter - that was different; it was a first for us and was well in line with our digital first strategy. You are going to see a lot of innovation play out over the next few weeks and months, so there are lots of things that we will do, possibly in schools too. We are also going to launch a lot of digital and social platform products under this umbrella. For example, in the next couple of weeks, we will launch our social network product which will run across 10 social platforms and will be a differentiated piece. The whole idea is not only to create brand pull, but also to have products that support the positive ‘India bole YES theme at the ground level, at the last mile.
Q] What are the bank’s plans with respect to Social Banking?
We would like to believe that what we are launching has never been done before. In a nutshell, it is not going to be restricted to one, two or three platforms. It is going to run across multiple platforms, and going to be very seamless.
There is going to be an overlay, so you won’t have to switch multiple applications etc., but essentially, the banking service will integrate with whatever social media platform we talk about and that is a big differentiator.
The insight there was that instead of pushing a social media product just for the sake of it, we wanted to have a banking product, which is going to overlay into the social media universe of the consumer. Social media is in a way a personal space and a lot of people don’t like interference there, and so we want to ensure that it works seamlessly.
Q] What is the media strategy for Yes Bank for the coming few months?
We will obviously deepen the ‘India bole YES’ theme. In fact, we did a very big internal launch before we launched the campaign externally, because we want our people – 12,000 Yes Bankers - to internalize this. This campaign is going to run across multiple platforms. Also, over the next few weeks, you will see a product rendition to the ‘India bole YES’ campaign where the emotional connect will be balanced with the rational benefit of the product. We plan to do this across five or six products. You will see a lot of digital innovation as well. When we launch our social platforms, we will ensure that the social banking platforms are beautifully integrated in the Digital space, innovatively talking about the benefits, and combined with a lot of BTL, both in our branches and across high impact properties that we associate with. October to March is a very heavy event season, and Yes Bank does a lot of these flagship properties. So whether it is sporting properties such a Polo or art, culture, theatre, literature, we are associated with big publication houses or big event properties, or we curate some of our own properties and all of these would be run under the ‘India bole YES’ umbrella.
Feedback: saloni.dutta@exchange4media.com
