Category: Brand

  • The future of Fintech marketing

    First published in ET Brand Equity

    Fintech is one of those small words that contains worlds. Just like marketing. While the former could be payments, lending, insurance, wealth management, neobanks etc, the latter includes brand management, digital acquisition, marketing automation, social media and so on. A combination of the two makes for a complex mix. It also means that crystal gazing has its limits and there really is no common answer. Having said that, let’s try our hand at “how it started, how it’s going to go…”

    Audience & Access: India’s digital economy now boasts over 700 million connected users. As per RBI data, the number of digital transactions are expected to make a 12x jump from 125 million a day in 2020 to 1.5 billion by 2025! Fintech has made leaps over the last 10 years – starting with personal finance products such as banking accounts and deposits, moving on to mobile payments and e-wallets, and finally leading to a full bouquet of financial services including trading, insurance and wealth management. But the pandemic has been a force multiplier for digitisation in many sectors, including personal finance. This audience avalanche means that marketers have to revisit their segmentation and personas, and deal with different cohorts of digital audiences at different levels of maturity. What are the new user segments, what financial products and services would they like to access, and what are the new use cases that will emerge?

    Brands & Behaviours: With new segments emerging, education and awareness will need to go hand in hand with acquisition strategies, and nuanced, personalised communication for different segments. While financial products on digital platforms may not be completely new to many consumers, brands will still need to earn the customer’s trust. This is especially true in the context of an unfamiliar investment product or service, and might require a revisit of customers’ needs, barriers and opportunities.

    This is crucial because we’re now living through a kind of liminality, a period marked by the uncertainty between an old normal, and what emerges next. Even more than before, marketers will need to have an empathetic mindset. Channeling this into communication will be necessary to build trust. Beyond actual trials, different consumer segments would have different surrogates for trust. And old wines and new bottles have challenges. Take celebrity endorsements, or its (relatively) poorer cousin – influencer marketing. Or “cause marketing”. All of them are susceptible to social media vigilantism and cancel culture, even as manufactured word of mouth thrives.

    The pandemic has forced us to relook our lives, and maybe even did a Marie Kondo on our lifestyle choices. “Experience shapes memory; memory shapes our view of the future.” What is the impact on the spending, saving and investing habits of your existing customers? What behaviours will we continue, what will we drop? Whom will we trust on money matters, and why?

    Cords & Cookies: We’re in the era of the second screen. After all, some people still use the television when they want a large screen experience. But seriously, though cord cutting may not be mass yet, such has been the rise of OTT and digital consumption in general that the erstwhile second screen is practically the first. This has a huge impact on the media mix, especially because of the range of customisation that’s possible on digital media. Of course, you might still be an IPL sponsor if you’re a mass brand, but it’s definitely possible to build brands with digital as the primary medium. Not that it’s without challenges. Some level of precision targeting will continue to be an option at the top of the funnel, but privacy concerns are making a cookie-less world imminent. Even as adtech is scrambling to find a replacement for cookies, (I believe that) first party data and a non-cookie cutter approach is something brands should focus on. Codeless designing, chatbots, and the ever increasing tools of marketing automation allow the digital marketer to create custom journeys using demographic, behavioural, and other parameters. Content marketing using multiple formats is still a great way to build domain authority and trust. Podcasts have seen quite a lift during the pandemic. In short, we have moved further from mainstream to many streams.

    Data & Delivery: The common theme in all the above points is fragmentation – of markets, messaging and media. And this is essentially what the future looks like. The challenge for the marketer is to ensure narrative cohesion. This requires us to get comfortable with collecting and analysing data, and being able to deliver this understanding via communication and channels. The other kind of delivery we’ll be responsible for is ROI. This will require us to find new ways to measure both effectiveness and efficiency across campaigns, channels and market segments.

    In closing: The “new normal” is unlikely to be the normal we knew. Especially for marketing, because even after the pandemic goes away, the uncertainty will linger in consumer minds. Despite the abundance of choice that customers have, there is an opportunity for brands. As Scott Galloway has astutely pointed out, “Choice is a tax on your time and attention. Consumers don’t want more choice, they want confidence in the choices presented.” In the race for wallet share, trust continues to be the best currency. Building a trusted brand in a fragmented world takes time and a growth mindset. It’s good to remember that there are no perfect solutions, only conscious trade-offs.

  • The business of brand

    It used to be that a brand manager could run 3-4 campaigns a year, negotiate heavily in media buying for efficiency, and roughly correlate effectiveness to quarterly brand health data and sales performance. With VC funding-led rapid scaling, digitisation,  real-time data, and polarised social media, this version is being rendered obsolete. The changing business context also means that looking at a 30 sec ad purely through a consumer lens is only half the story. Two recent examples made me reflect on the dynamics between brand, social media, and business.  I do realise that my commenting on them is a bit like the Nobody – Me meme, and delayed at that, but that’s one of the perks of having a blog.

    Cred: We’ll begin with the Mad Men perspective, but after a short detour. Brand building for VC-funded startups has a template that actually works. Rational benefits with emotional storytelling. Flipkart and Myntra both went through a learning curve with “Granny and Mouse” and “Where fashion comes together” respectively, before they cracked it with “kids as adults” and “Real life mein aisa hota hai kya?“. It works because in addition to building the brand promise, it also has a tangible effect on business. And that’s why it’s often followed by many others across categories – Pepperfry, LivSpace, Khatabook, or even an extended approach like The Whole Truth. This is assuming that distribution, product, customer service etc are at least on par, and the execution is done well.  In that context, Cred’s recent ads, after readability issues in the first print ad, and the lengthy Jim Sarbh ad, were most definitely clutter-breaking. By not following that template.  (more…)

  • What makes a full stack marketer?

    On Twitter, GG asked a question that I felt compelled to answer because I have used this on LinkedIn for a while.

    I did borrow the phrase from tech, but sounding cool didn’t quite cover it. 🙂

    To begin with, why do I use it? First, the people I want to connect with on LinkedIn are from the consumer tech, digital marketing and brand domains. This usage would be familiar to them, and would help frame my experience and expertise. The experience straddles the offline and digital space, and has media, FMCG, e-commerce and fintech brands. The second part is to do with the skill sets that I think qualifies one for that description. This is my attempt to elaborate on the latter. The “frontend” and “backend” of marketing. It covers demand generation, lead generation, and conversion but I have refrained from classifying it because it is context-dependent.

    Disclaimer: These are my perspectives of things I have worked on. I do this with the understanding that “as our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance” (more…)

  • Woke it out for yourself!

    A couple of months ago, I wrote an article for afaqs on the challenges for brands trying to remain relevant by stepping into “woke” territory. To summarise, being selectively woke is not an option. Every action by an organisation is scrutinised, and sometimes, scored! Both McDonald’s and P&G were in the “danger zone” of being viewed as more exploitative than empowering. The former even got called out by NAACP for not supporting workers. However, this post is not to belabour that point, instead I’d like to hypothesise on the long term impact on consumption and brand building. (more…)

  • Provoke the Woke?

    Originally published in afaqs

    “In these unprecedented times”, brands have been making many efforts to stay relevant by inserting themselves into cultural narratives, but it isn’t that easy. In fact, they are increasingly realising that their plans might actually backfire when they provoke the ‘woke’.

    Woke versus Broke

    Nike’s path-breaking campaign in 2018, featuring (American football quarterback) Colin Kaepernick, is now a case study for brands taking a stance on matters of societal relevance. But it also had a relatively lesser-known second order consequence. In 2019, Nike was forced to take sides in the Hong Kong protests.

    When Daryl Morey, general manager, Houston Rockets (a professional basketball team in the US), tweeted his support for the protesters, China gave the National Basketball Association (NBA) a cold stare. The NBA apologised, and Nike gave an assist by pulling its Houston Rockets merchandise from five stores in Beijing and Shanghai.

    It didn’t just end there. Courtesy LeBron James (professional basketball player), with whom Nike has an association worth north of $1 billion. James’s response was that Morey was misinformed, and that “We do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative things that come with that, too. I don’t think every issue should be everybody’s problem.”

    Nike took a stance, by staying silent. But having taken an unflinching stance in the US on a ‘freedom of expression’ issue, Nike’s response to China reflected poorly on the brand. Unsurprisingly, they got called out by quite a few commentators. Nike had its reasons. Its China business was worth $6 billion, having doubled in five years, even as the US sales remained flat.

    All the world’s staged

    In ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’, Erving Goffman uses the metaphor of a theatre to describe human interactions. Backstage is where “the performer can relax; he can drop his front, forgo speaking in his lines, and step out of character.” On stage, though, there is a performance to be delivered. These days, thanks to the proliferation of social platforms, the ‘backstage’ is shrinking. We’re always ‘on show’ for some audience – on Instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, and yes, TikTok.

    The same goes for brands as well. Advertising, PR communication, social media content, all ‘performances’ are not just watched, but connected, too, with everything that is known about the brand. Every expression is an impression. Goffman emphasises that the audience is also a part of the performance, and without their tacit agreement, the show would fall apart. Taken together, this means that the option to be selectively woke is disappearing.

    Moments of truth

    Back in 2017, a three-second body wash ad on Facebook, which featured a Black woman turning into a White woman, almost cost Dove years of ‘real beauty’ work. It managed to redeem itself by making some smart moves, both tactically and strategically. Things have become more difficult these days. Because ironically, we are all even more touchy in the era of social distancing! And bad news travels faster. All it takes is one status update.

    Even as (Amazon’s) Jeff Bezos drew applause for “And Dave, you’re the kind of customer I’m happy to lose”, there were questions being asked about the use of Amazon’s tech by police for racial profiling. While resolving that, the company got called out for treatment of workers. It’s not just Amazon. When brands like Uber, Apple, Adidas, etc., take a stance on racism, they are being questioned on the lack of diversity in workforce and leadership. Google and Facebook are even facing employee activism.

    Closer home, #BlackLivesMatter, and celebrities endorsing fairness creams make for an interesting Venn diagram. And, it’s not just celebrities. In the name of ‘Moment Marketing’, many brands have seen their woke moments in the sun rapidly become sunstrokes!

    Don’t get me wrong, this is not to say that brands shouldn’t make topical and relevant narratives a part of their messaging strategy. But in an increasingly polarised world, communication is a full contact sport.

    Dave or Dove, the message is clear, brand communication is no longer a skin-deep game, it is about having skin in the game. As consumers move upwards in the hierarchy of needs, their expectation from brands is moving down – in a direction that’s familiar to marketers. Rather than just creating awareness and interest on things that matter, consumers desire action from brands!