Summary
Empowering Your Business by Empowering You To enable business owners to succeed in the digital age, we created Kotak Business Banking Solutions, an all-in-one offering to address their evolving needs. Aiming for widespread awareness we tapped into Kotak's in-depth understanding of their interests, ambitions and challenges to launch the ‘Empowering Business, Empowering You' campaign. Deployed through mix of conventional and digital channels, our campaign touched a chord and resulted in extraordinary reach and impact pan-India
Challenge
India has over 60.3 million MSMEs, contributing a whopping 30% to India's GDP. Whether a start-up or a family-owned business with rich heritage, they're embracing increasing levels of digitalization and unification to add impetus to their businesses. Kotak Mahindra Bank understood that siloed banking services don't adequately meet the modern entrepreneur's needs and ambitions; instead, the need of the hour was a trustworthy partner that offered all-in-one solutions for all their business banking needs. To address this evolutionary need-gap, we conceived Kotak Business Banking Solutions, a holistic service that helped tackle not only their existing wants, but also anticipated future challenges towards meeting their business goals. However, simply solving the business challenge wasn't enough, we also needed to establish awareness of Kotak Bank as a comprehensive solution for the business banking customer by creating a buzz both online and offline.
Objective
Building awareness and interest amongst an audience numbering in the millions is no mean feat. Doing so while simplifying the complexities of a holistic banking solution, even tougher. We needed to not only inform existing customers, but also educate potential customers about the advantages of partnering with Kotak Business Banking solutions. All while driving immediately measurable interest and enquiries.
Strategy
A look at India's MSME landscape shows us that most are family-owned businesses with a track record of success. As the younger, digitally savvy generation has taken over these family businesses, they must contend with the dual challenges of an ever-changing business landscape as well as the internal pressures and expectations of their forebearers. However, this passionate breed of new-age entrepreneurs isn't one to give up on their ambitions easily, living by the mantra of "no guts, no glory", they are motivated to overcome all difficulties towards growing and expanding their businesses. Inspired by their 'never say die' attitude and their enthusiasm towards building a better way to do business, Kotak Business Banking solutions developed a singular message, one which would cut through the noise. To land this message effectively for such a vast audience, we understood the need to transcend geographies and mindsets. To go beyond the conventional to engage with them at a time of their choice, primarily on digital and social channels they're most comfortable with.
Data
However, simply understanding the channels they prefer wasn't enough. Through a series of wide-ranging conversations, surveys, and business immersion sessions, we identified the most pressing challenges and areas of interest that were shaping their perspective on the future of their business. A summation of our research also helped us confirm that their definition of success wasn't just limited to solving business issues, but also disproving stereotypes and apprehensions held by their predecessors. Turns out, most of them weren't just looking for business banking solutions, they were seeking a dependable and experienced partner that believed in their ability and vision.
Solution
What better way to garner widespread awareness and recall, than owning the biggest celebration of MSMEs and their stewards, 27th of June, World MSME Day? Armed with this thought, Kotak Business Banking solutions launched our 'Empowering Business, Empowering You' campaign with three digital films celebrating the inspirational journeys of 3 new-age business owners. Our 3 young entrepreneurs detailed the ¬¬¬¬stereotypes and misgivings they faced on taking over their familial business. We saw them progress on their journey towards disproving commonly held apprehensions, and eventually emerge as leaders, ably supported by their partnership with Kotak Business Banking solutions. However, just 3 films weren't enough to showcase the many similar success stories from across the nation. To this end, we collaborated with Yourstory to create ‘The Success Edition' chronicling the stories of 6 inspirational entrepreneurs who had partnered with Kotak Business Banking solutions to achieve their business goals. We further extended and amplified the ‘Empowering Business, Empowering You' campaign by serving video and display ads to all business owners who had displayed a specific interest in comprehensive business banking solutions. These ads also used geo-targeting to enable these business owners to connect with key business banking branches in their vicinity. Our campaign wasn't just limited to the tech-savvy enterprise owner, we also recognized the importance of the local shop owner and celebrated them through the 'Fayde Waali Diwali, Fayde Wala POS' ideal. Through strategically placed outdoor and in-store branding we encouraged customers to revisit the conventional in-store method of shopping, armed with the power of digital payments. And we weren't done yet; we knew that empowering business owners couldn't be limited to just a single campaign, hence we partnered with The India SME Forum to give a boost to Indian Exports through in-depth educational content and events.
Results
This combination of a very relevant message, along with a highly targeted platform approach enabled the ‘Empowering Business, Empowering You' campaign to generate extraordinary buzz and impact with the 3 digital films alone garnering a reach of 21 million and over 14 million views. Apart from the highly positive press around the campaign's films, our collaboration with Yourstory also received widespread acclaim with it reaching over 2.5 million business owners and generating over 2 million views. Our uniquely segmented and geo-targeted communications also proved to be highly effective with a 10+ million reach, 20+ million impressions and over half a million views in a short span of time. With its customer-targeted POS leg also garnering over 4 million impressions, Kotak's ‘Empowering Business, Empowering You' campaign exceeded all expectations to reach over 31 million business owners, garnering 68+ million impressions and 18+ million views cumulatively, in the just the span of a few months. More importantly, our campaign also generated over 3 Lakh unique visits on Kotak's Business Banking Solutions pages.
