Summary
The pandemic made the entire country sit at home for days, and spending hours on screens became normal. This led to exposure to several digital ads, and without much else to do, impulsive shopping helped alleviate moods. With Quest2Invest, we were able to stand out from a clutter of ads on Mother's Day and Father's Day, engage with our core audience, get quality leads
Challenge
The pandemic made everyone sit at home, with nowhere to be and nothing much to do. At a time when people couldn't step out, screen times were at an all time high, and mindless scrolling became second nature. With being confined to their homes, people were also saving. Brands were fast to realise this, so they started serving targeted ads to all the scrollers. This led to impulse shopping, with upto 72% of survey respondents admitting, online impulsive purchasing made them feel better (source). While other brands were asking the audience to indulge in unnecessary purchases, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund saw an opportunity to remind people to invest.
Objective
The campaign marketing objectives were: - Awareness, including reach and engagement over 10M and 2M respectively, and - Capture leads and exceed previous campaign results by at least 50%
Strategy
We, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund, wanted to make a breakthrough with our core audience, who we knew from our research had been saving during the pandemic, and, to a large extent, splurging on non-essentials. We knew this audience had money to spare, but were spending that money rather than saving or investing it to reach their long term financial goals. We wished to highlight the importance of investing in a disciplined manner, which can be achieved via a Systematic Investment Plan. A Systematic Investment Plan is a mode of investing in mutual funds where one can invest a fixed amount of money in the selected scheme at regular intervals. Instead of the joy that comes from impulse buying, we aimed to give them a chance to grow their money and have a more secure financial future. We wanted to stand apart from the clutter of advertisements around Mother's Day and Father's Day, by asking the audience to not give in to yet another impulsive purchase, but to invest their hard earned money in mutual funds instead via the SIP route.
Data
During the pandemic, secondary research data told us that people in India, especially in the age band of 18-54 (source), were saving more, but simultaneously, also spending more on things to help them feel less bored – non-essentials like clothes, shoes, accessories, and even out-of-the-ordinary amusement items like baking or gardening equipment. Nearly 3 out of every 4 people polled said that impulsive online shopping made them feel better. (source) 9 to 14 hours a day (source) of mindless, almost desperate screen time, meant that our audience was already seeing hundreds of display ads a day – ads that were a sneaky culprit, enticing our audience to buy the new dress, the fancy pair of high heels, that smartwatch, and much more. Essentially, making lifestyle the enemy of future financial security. We decided to hijack the medium, and serve some sneaky ads of our own.
Solution
We targeted search terms, like jeans, dresses, summer sales, watches; things people were buying but did not necessarily need, and flipped the story. So, whenever someone searched the term "jeans", they were served a seemingly authentic result, but with a curiosity-piquing copy. Suddenly, that non-essential purchase seemed like momentary happiness at the cost of long-term financial security that could be achieved through a simple and disciplined approach to investing in mutual funds - Systematic Investment Plan, with us. All they had to do was click the ad and start their investing journey. To make sure we caught our audience at the right moment, we leveraged 2 days when people tend to shop more – Mother's Day and Father's Day. And we asked them to consider investing for their parents' future instead, so that instead of giving Dad a shirt and cologne again this year, they could give him something much nicer, next year, all with the power of compounding.
Results
On Mother's Day, in just a span of 8 days, we got: Reach : 1,80,90,920 Impressions 4,20,87,945 Clicks :10,67,079 Click-thru Rates : 2.54% Engagement : 45,14,599 Breaking it down, Facebook : Reach : 1,46,38,461 Impressions 2,81,96,777 Clicks :9,46,532 Click-thru Rates : 3.36% Engagement : 3171943 Engagement Rate : 11.25% Instagram: Reach : 67,96,338 Impressions 1,16,86,048 Clicks :21,269 Click-thru Rates : 0.18% Engagement : 1342656 Engagement Rate : 11.49% GDN : Reach : 11,78,851 Impressions 22,05,120 Clicks : 99,278 Click-thru Rates : 4.50% Inspired by our performance on Mothers' Day, we decided to extend the campaign for Father's Day as well, and once again, the numbers did not disappoint. In about a week, we got : Facebook : Reach : 55840 Impressions 65719 Clicks : 9809 Click-thru Rates : 14.93% Engagement : 30071 Engagement Rate : 45.76% Instagram: Reach : 102593 Impressions 107309 Clicks :125 Click-thru Rates : 0.12% Engagement : 17097 Engagement Rate : 15.93% Overall, in a campaign that ran for less than a fortnight, we got Total reach : over 21 million Impressions : over 40 million Engagement : over 4 million Average Engagement Rate of 21.12%, And nearly 4x leads (compared to many of our previous campaigns) Importantly, in just less than a fortnight, this clever little campaign generated nearly 4x the number of leads we had anticipated (benchmarked against our own previous digital campaigns)
