‘We are now taking a different view of communicating the proposition to our clients’

Standard Chartered Bank launched its first television campaign created for the Indian market on 26 February 2013. Created by TBWA/India, the campaign features two films based on the theme ‘Jaisa naam waisa kaam’, besides print, radio and OOH legs. Digital accounts for 40 per cent of the marketing budget, explains Chaudhuri, in conversation with Campaign India.

What are the marketing objectives of this campaign?

With the campaign, we want to bring about a certain degree of discreet and distinct value propositions in the consumer’s mind for the banking products that we offer. Based on our own research, we believe the consumer is looking for something that is tangible, convenient and rewarding. But over and beyond this, they desire a great banking relationship.

The basic premise of the campaign is that we bring both the convenience and the banking relationship together. We wanted to talk of a banking relationship called priority/ preferred banking from Standard Chartered as relationships that actually add tangible rewards to what you already have.

Who is the TG for the campaign?

We have decided not to typecast the target marketing by the typical demographic characteristics of age, gender, etc. What we have said is that we are looking for a certain mindset and that mindset could be possessed by a middle aged person or a slightly younger person, male or female, and so on. It will be the person who values the value proposition we are talking about - not everybody may value it and say that I want to have a fantastic banking experience. We will make the banking relationship the centre point, and it will attract a certain target audience from a psychographic point of view.

What is the creative thought behind the campaign?

The creative thought behind the campaign is the contradictions that exists. The theme is what you see of a person is not always what he or she is about. However, the same does not hold true for the bank as we say that the Standard Chartered banking relationship is ‘Jaisa naam waisa kaam’. We are building on the bedrock that there are contradictions in peoples’ lives but in a banking relationship if you are told you will get some benefits then you must get them. It should not be so vague that you don’t know what you are entitled to.

Standard Chartered has not had any campaigns in India prior to this. Why now? Could you explain the timing?

In banking, there is no timing as a customer may want to open an account at any time. It is not episodic. With this campaign, we want to be omnipresent with the customer.

We advertise a lot oversees but in India there is not much brand advertising or product advertising. What has changed is the fact that we always had very good products; maybe we were not promoting them as clearly or as aggressively. But now we are just making it more easily accessible to our consumers. The propositions have always existed; we have the best credit cards in the market. But now we are taking a different view of communicating it to our clients.

How important is digital in your media mix?

Nearly 40 per cent of our marketing budget constitutes of digital expenses. We are very aggressive on the digital front as we are spending great money on this. We believe most of our customers live online and this will continue in the same direction. The advantage of digital is that it is much more measureable. When we advertise on digital, we know exactly what is the return we got in terms of click through rates and finally conversions. It is any marketer’s dream to get accountability for their marketing spends.

View the ad films here: A ‘savings’ account should live up to its name, says Standard Chartered Bank