‘Brand building or storytelling has to go hand in hand with performance marketing’

Performance-driven advertising and brand storytelling are two kinds of requests received by agencies when it comes to BFSI sectors. Typically, when there is a lead generation-led campaign, the KPIs of branding are not called out or often forgivable to not achieve. On the other hand, a loud rally campaign is expected to deliver leads.

Anisha Iyer, CEO, OMD India, who moderated a women-led panel on ‘Impactful Brand Building for Financials and Innovative Solutions’ at the Pitch BFSI Summit 2023, set the context of the discussion and raised a question as to why this dichotomy exists in some sectors, especially BFSI.

Amrutha Nair, Head - Entertainment Ad Sales and Strategy, Disney Star, Sujatha V Kumar, Head of Marketing- India & South Asia, Visa, Geetanjali Sachwani, VP and Head-Marketing, Franklin Templeton, Darshana Shah, Head- Marketing and Customer Experience, ABFRL, and Elizabeth Venkataraman, Joint President - Head of Marketing, Partnerships & Loyalty, Kotak Mahindra Bank, were the panellists on the discussion.

Kumar kickstarted the discussion by saying, “The scenario is not an ‘either or’ but ‘and’ case. This is because I don't think as a brand we can afford to say you must only do brand building/storytelling or only performance marketing.”

“To decide which one to do more actually depends on the objective of the campaign,” she added.

Sachwani believes the first era of marketing was all about logic and reasoning. The second era was all about emotions. The third was totally about data and analytics. Marketing 4.0 was about customer engagement, performance marketing, cost per view. Now, we are entering into the fifth era where senses and sensibilities using artificial intelligence and machine learning are coming together to help brands with strategies.

Speaking about making communication in the BFSI sector more entertaining, Shah shared, “When it comes to BFSI, it is seen as a serious category because it involves monetary transactions. So over the years, the communication has been emotional or fear-based. Consumers should not look at us as too fun and quirky since we are handling their hard-earned money.”

Another stereotype that exists in the BFSI sector is that it is perceived as a ‘men vs women’ field. The Kotak Mahindra Bank executive elaborated, “When I spoke to women to understand what are their expectations from banking, we realised they want to be spoken to differently. They want to be spoken to about needs and not just products.”

Iyer then shed the spotlight on the fact that the content consumers see also shapes them and it has been the ‘saas-bahu’ content since ages now on linear TV. It is the best way to redefine the way women see the BFSI sector and can also be leveraged to reach the right audience.

Responding to this, Nair shared as a content-generating company, they are blamed the most for making content more for women. “Over the last 10 years, if you actually look at it, every little piece of our content and its characters inspires a large audience who exist beyond our world."

She added, "Most of the characters have a huge social media presence and the audience follows them because fundamentally they are aspirational for the consumer. Definitely, there is a cohort that believes this sort of content is regressive but a large part of the world out there believes otherwise too.”