Q] How are you feeling after taking on the new role, and what are your expectations and goals moving forward?
Ravi: I am feeling excited because this is a coming-of-age moment for a traditional bank. Historically, we have faced pressure in the area of distribution, wherein we had to reach different nooks and corners of the country. However, we are now placing our bet on the direct-to-customer channel. It is something that has been done in many other industries by many new-age companies. Finance is a field where one can directly deal with Digital companies and customers. It’s great to set up this new space and take it to places.
Q] What does your marketing mix look like and could you tell us if there will be any changes?
Ravi: People often wonder if traditional media and Digital media will co-exist, whether Digital will take over traditional media, and about the fate of print. As marketers, we always believe in one thing – wherever the consumer spends their quality time, you need to be there. We are in the process of evolution. Once upon a time, traditional media meant television, however, today, linear TV might not be working that well, but OTT is. In our view, it’s very simple. If you have a clear product, understand it, know who the consumer is, and have a clear communication plan. The medium automatically falls into place after this. If you go by the traditional rule, business objectives, marketing objectives and campaign objectives are different at different points of time. This is what makes the media mix.
Q] Your latest campaign has three films featuring Tiger Shroff, Prabhu Deva, and Kapil Sharma. What was the idea behind the PayZapp campaign, and was there any particular reason to cast this trio?
Amit: We wanted to showcase the all-new PayZapp that offers consumers payment options. The attempt was to showcase this choice and reach the maximum number of people. I think things work when they are authentic and come from culture, and one of the biggest phenomena in culture is the entertainment space. When we were looking at the entertainment space, we realised that many creators and celebrities don’t get many choices in terms of their roles and characters. Since they are particularly good at one genre, that becomes a defining factor and gets stuck to them. It’s something that has happened to hundreds of celebrities, and we wanted to show tales of such celebrities. Then we started looking for our picks, keeping in mind their reach. I call it the most honest celebrity campaign because you have celebrities saying this is what we went through, life doesn’t give you choices, but PayZapp does. Our final goal was to showcase the right celebrity with a real-life story that everybody believes is true.
Ravi: We felt that the best thing that we are offering is to give customers the power to decide whether they want to pay by a debit card, credit card, UPI, or wallet. The control is with the customer and it translates to choices for them. That’s where the thought came in that PayZapp is all about choices, pay anyone, anywhere, anytime, through any of the options. Then we started thinking about how to bring this to life. We started working on the thought of bringing in people who are stereotyped and don’t have choices, and then talked about PayZapp which provides choices. It was a fantastic experience working with all three of them and I am very happy with how the campaign has unfolded.
Q] Digital lending platforms and the Buy Now, Pay Later segment is picking up. What is HDFC doing in this regard?
Ravi: We have a big plan. We are the first people in the country to bring Buy Now, Pay Later. I don’t think people realise credit card is nothing but Buy Now, Pay Later, and we are the biggest Buy Now, Pay Later player in the country in that way. And then we have added multiple factors to the same thing in terms of consumer durability, EMI and other stuff. This progress will continue. We are pretty strong in digital lending. In our view, the next wave of growth will be coming via credit on UPI, which has been approved by the government. We will be launching it within PayZapp to start with, not only for customers of HDFC Bank but for customers of all banks, meaning you’ll become a PayZapp customer.
Q] How was this particular project different from others?
Amit: I think the scale of this project was huge and this could have gone in any way. The idea was cracked earlier on and this entire thing was around people being typecasted. It was great how these big celebrities came out and embraced their realities. It wasn’t celebrities speaking vanilla, but their lived experiences. The most fun thing was these three people of immense stature coming and making fun of their reality and being authentic. And that’s why it connected well.
