The first CRED ad in 2020 said 'Not everyone gets it'. Well, we still don't

While most fintech brands focus intently on explaining the intricacies of investment plans and highlighting cashback offers in their advertising, CRED has decided to take the road less travelled. And by 'less travelled', we mean a whimsical journey through Bollywood's most dazzling corridors, leaving us all wondering: "What on earth does this have to do with managing my finances?"

Picture this: You're scrolling through YouTube, minding your own business, when suddenly Karan Johar pops up, hosting a quiz show that wouldn't look out of place on prime-time telly. But wait, this isn't Star World – it's a CRED advert. Confused? Join the club.

Let's rewind to 2020, when CRED unveiled its first series of ad films under the campaign Not everyone gets it. The star-studded affair featured a constellation of celebrities including Anil Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit, Govinda, and singers Bappi Lahiri, Alka Yagnik, Udit Narayan, and Daler Mehndi. The entire campaign, in all its glitzy glory, boiled down to one call to action: download CRED. (Watch below)

Fast forward to 2021, and CRED upped the ante with ads featuring actor Jim Sarbh and veteran cricketer Rahul Dravid. This time, the ads touched upon one facet of CRED's offering - CRED points on credit card bills paid via the app. Yet, for many viewers, the full scope of CRED's services remained shrouded in mystery.

The pattern continued for a couple of years, with CRED consistently delivering high-production, celebrity-filled adverts that entertained but didn't necessarily illuminate. More recently, the brand also roped in Australian cricketer David Warner and acclaimed director SS Rajamouli for this year’s IPL extravaganza, pushing what the brand calls CRED UPI.

Here's the rub – after four years of this celebrity-driven spectacle, many of us are still scratching our heads, wondering what exactly CRED does. Some may even say it's as if the brand took its first tagline, Not everyone gets it, a bit too literally. We reached out to industry experts to understand if the brand’s strategy of being bullish on awareness works in its favour, or if there is an opportunity that it might be missing out on. 

Amit Wadhwa, CEO of Dentsu Creative India, who acknowledges the entertainment quotient, and the ability of these ads to generate buzz for CRED, says, "When CRED had just launched, no one knew what it was. The initial communications that the brand put out, with the likes of Rahul Dravid created a lot of buzz and curiosity around the brand. However, as we've moved along, while the entertainment value of these ads has been fairly consistent, the business and proposition aspect of CRED has not been very clear, especially from a general consumer's point of view. Along with disruption, bringing in elements of information works better from a business perspective as well."

He suggests a balanced approach: "This does not mean that the brand needs to create a 'brochure' as an ad. But there is a need to give a semblance of what the brand is and what it does, and most importantly what distinguishes it from the competitors. Not at the cost of being disruptive."

Manish Porwal, managing director of Alchemist Marketing and Talent Solutions, has similar views on CRED’s advertising catalogue. He opines, "Initially it wanted to familiarise the consumers with its name and wanted to build intrigue around it. But there are a lot of people in the market who do not completely understand what CRED is all about. The initial strategy makes complete sense, but it is about time CRED actually communicate what it does, or what it brings to consumers as a service."

Porwal suggests that CRED might have oversimplified its messaging: "While the BFSI category due to its complicated nature requires some degree of simplification for consumers, the brand appears to have oversimplified it. What are the services? How does it enhance my life? What do I do with it? That part is still not clear to me."

But CRED's marketing strategy doesn't stop at star-driven commercials. The brand has gone all-in on content marketing, producing a smorgasbord of series with titles that sound like they were pulled from a millennial finance guru's vision board: My Two Cents, On The Money, The Long Game, and the intriguingly named CRED Curious.

As Amit Wadhwa puts it, "Content is king. If you're creating awareness through ads, following it up with content that explains the finer details of the brand and the product is a great strategy, especially for the BFSI brands, since the category is slightly more complicated than the rest."

However, as is the case with CRED ads, the brand’s content is also largely miscellaneous in terms of what it wants to convey. Case in point: CRED recently partnered with YouTuber Arpit Bhala to create a diss track for a CRED member's friend. What?

It's clear that CRED is determined to be the life of the party, even if we're not entirely sure what kind of party we're at.

Circling back on the creative strategy behind the CRED ads, Sambit Mohanty, creative head at McCann Worldgroup India, offers a different perspective. He says, "How Cred works is possibly too layered to explain in an ad - because its offerings are now multiple instead of just facilitating credit card payments. The idea, therefore, is to build curiosity and intrigue about the brand - something it has managed to do with aplomb thanks to its unique brand of quirky advertising."

Mohanty sees CRED's strategy as a potential lesson for other fintech brands. He says, "There's a lesson in here for other Fintech brands—scratch the surface about what you're offering, instead of doing a deep dive that leaves people yawning."

Yousuf Rangoonwala, founder of Kakkoii Entertainment and the former VP of strategy at Leo Burnett India, sees merit in CRED's approach, saying, "By focusing on brand building through high-profile celebrity endorsements and engaging content, CRED has managed to carve out a distinct and memorable presence in a crowded market. This approach isn't just about flashy ads; it's a deliberate strategy to make the brand stand out and remain top-of-mind for consumers."

He also points out an additional benefit of being able to excite the audience enough to not evade the ad. He says, "The focus on entertainment over traditional product-focused advertising can break through the typical 'skip' behaviour that plagues many ads. By creating content that is enjoyable and intriguing, CRED effectively engages viewers, leading to higher brand recall and a stronger overall impact."