BankBazaar.com sings to FB, Instagram, Twitter fans through 11 videos

The digital campaign, #ItsBeenAGoodYear, celebrates some of the brand's biggest fans on social media with personalised musical messages.

In a category where most ads remind people of the near-catastrophic possibilities in life, coming up with some interesting communication is a big challenge. While in the recent past, several insurance brands did try to take the emotional route, light-heartedness was still missing. And this gap is what the online marketplace for financial products - BankBazaar's - new campaign seems to fill.

Conceptualised in-house, the digital campaign #ItsBeenAGoodYear, celebrates some of the brand's biggest fans on social media with personalised musical messages. The songs thank followers for their support and appreciation throughout the year. The month-long activity is being executed on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Commenting on the insight behind the campaign, Prince Thomas, assistant vice-president - brand marketing, BankBazaar.com, says "This year has been very good for us in terms of overall engagement, which saw 3x growth. So, we wanted to thank our fans for their support."

Thomas shares that last year around 80 per cent of the brand's promotional budgets were allocated to digital, with the focus being - digital content. Some of the campaigns that BankBazaar came up with include '#DearMe - What Advice Would You Give Your Younger Self?', '#WhatsInYourWallet - Every Wallet Tells A Story. What's Yours?', 'The New Indian Wedding - #PlayYourPart', 'Diwali Bonus Wali' and '#ThankYouDad'.

In the BFSI sector, communication has always been very unexciting and at times tedious because of the apparent/perceived need to be informative. But BankBazaar, informs Thomas, has strategically chosen to take the emotional route. "Our aim is to identify progressive topics and communicate them in an emotional manner," he adds.

Thumbs-up?

Appreciating the campaign, Bikram Bindra, vice-president and strategic planning head - Grey Group Delhi, says, "The power of the digital medium is that it allows brands to have varied conversations with their audience, and this is a great example of that. Imagine getting a personalised thank you from a brand that you're loyal to; it's like a reciprocation of your love."

"For a lot of brands today, the focus is on customer acquisition, and once that is done - well the consumer be damned! This is a great example of how some of them are thinking of long standing relationships and through this leveraging the powerful role that positive word of mouth plays today," he adds.

While Bindra agrees that the BFSI sector has been fairly banal and functional in its communication, he thinks that this campaign is quite an attempt to bring some light hearted fun to it. "I find the execution quite endearing, and the best part - it comes minus the usual fancy trappings that we love to layer our work with. It's a clean, simple and thoughtful concept," he remarks.

Shibu Shivanandan, founder and MD, PivotRoots also finds the idea refreshing because it breaks the clutter of brands trying to hardsell products, push the USP or get people to their website. "The market has been talking about personalisation. BankBazaar, I think, has been able to crack that in a much simpler format," he notes.

Commenting further on the insight, he says, "consumers would have a got a 'Wow' experience as they would never have imagined a brand talking to them on a one to one basis."

Shivanandan believes that the future of hyper personalisation lies in data and analytics which will enable brands to communicate better to consumers if they have the right consumer data available.

Jagdish Acharya, founder and creative head, Cut The Crap, says that while it's a "done and done again idea internationally", the campaign still qualifies for the 'it's different' tag in India. "However, since the videos look the same and the lyrics hardly vary there isn't much fun in listening to the spots for anyone other than the addressees. It's sweet, but more cutesy than cute," he states.

According to Acharya, it's erroneous to judge each digital video independently based on the likes, shares and such. "Digital is the most cluttered place with no memory space," he remarks, adding, "In that context, the overall campaign is like a meteor that burns away on entering the atmosphere."