With ‘Count on Us’, the old blends with the new in Tata Capital’s transformation

Whether you’re a big company or small, a well-thought-out tagline is important to convey the brand purpose and create a stronger connect with customers. The tagline quickly and efficiently sums up what you are all about. It captures the true essence of your brand’s promise in a few words. They conjure up positive images of your brand and aid in brand recall.

After 14 years, Tata Capital has decided to change their tagline. There are many reasons behind a brand decision to change the tagline to communicate their brand values and promise. In the case of Tata Capital, their product offerings have changed over the years and the brand is also addressing a new set of young audience so that they can connect in the right way with their stakeholders and customers. So, Tata Capital, as part of their brand transformation journey decided to bring in some of the core values of Tata’s and blend it with the new vision and brand promise that they want to offer. Keeping this in mind, a new tagline ‘Count on US’ has been coined. The new tagline will now appear in all the internal and external communications as a new marketing journey commences.

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To understand the purpose of this new tagline and the objective behind it, Adgully spoke to Abonty Banerjee, Chief Digital & Marketing Officer, Tata Capital.

What was the need to go for a new tagline after 14 years and what was objective behind creating this new tagline? Was any kind of research conducted with your customers to cull out some insights?

Tata Capital, the financial services arm of the Tata group, was founded in the year 2007. Over the last 14 years, even while retaining its core DNA of trust, Tata Capital as a brand and organisation has grown significantly. It has evolved over time to adapt to the ever-changing business environment, customer expectations and has reached new milestones to meet all its stakeholder’s expectations. In its endeavour to drive change, innovate and cater to a diverse set of customers and create distinction in the financial marketplace, Tata Capital’s brand, too, went through a transformation. As part of our brand transformation journey, in which we blend the old with the new, we felt it is the right time to look at an invigorating and fresh positioning and a new brand promise. Our new tagline – ‘Count on Us’ – will now be used for all our internal and external communications.

We regularly conduct quantitative and qualitative research for the brand to understand the shift in customer behaviour, preferences and expectations. Tata Capital’s consumer insights study revealed that ‘delivering on promises’ is one of the most significant attributes while choosing a financial services partner. This was a key input for us. This study helped us understand how we can align our customers’ expectations to Tata Capital’s Purpose and Values.  Also, ‘Count on Us’ exudes the image of a dependable, modern brand with empathy which further accentuates Tata Capital’s key brand personality attributes.

Further, as a company, while we work with a diverse set of customers, one of our prospective customer segments is also the younger population, that is, Millennials and Gen Z. The key attribute of ‘delivering on promises’ also resonated very well with the young.

What is the thought process and rationale behind the new tagline – ‘Count on Us’? Tata Capital as a name already communicates trust, how is this new tagline going to amplify it further?

As an organisation, Tata Capital has changed in more ways than one. To put this into perspective, currently we have a far more comprehensive suite of offerings that are available across various digital platforms. Today, we service our clients over Chatbots and Voicebots and we disburse loans faster than ever before. So, Tata Capital is far more agile today, can cater to a larger audience given its advanced digital capabilities and so there is a transformation. However, even though the company has changed, our core remains unchanged. Tata Capital will always promise to put the customer first, our DNA of upholding the values and ethics of our group are some of the pillars that will always remain unchanged. Taking this rich heritage of being part of the Tata Group forward, we aimed to further build on our strength of being a “Responsible financial partner fulfilling India's aspirations”, which is our Purpose statement. However, given the ever changing business dynamics and internal changes, and while we will always be inspired by our core, we wished to exude the new. “Count on Us” gave us that perfect fit, where the old blends with the new.

Will this new tagline be part of all your new campaigns? Or will there be a separate tagline for each of your product campaigns?

In fact, we first used ‘Count on Us’ as a campaign tagline. That was also one of the strong indicators of its relevance and resonance amongst our customers, existing as well as prospective. We have also used it on our Social Media communication. So far, the new brand tagline is well received. ‘Count on us’ will be used across all our campaigns going forward as well. For our product campaigns, for now, we will work with our existing strategy of using the brand tag line itself.

Design wise how will the new tagline look in the overall scheme of things? Have any font and colours been identified for this new tagline?

Earlier this year, we launched a refreshed brand guideline. We did not make a 180-degree flip on the existing one but reasons for change were identical as the tagline. We aimed to create a modern, a simpler and cleaner look and feel.

At that point, we also reviewed the logo unit and revised the typography.

We have consciously not made too much of a departure from the earlier logo unit and the primary colours. However, the typography for the brand and tagline has been replaced appropriately as per the new guideline.

How are you planning the execution and ensuring that the new tagline will appear in all collaterals?

We are planning the change of the brand tagline across all spheres in a phased manner. We implemented this change effectively on our social media and digital campaigns and also with our internal stakeholders as well. We will soon roll out the next plan for our collaterals and other customer touch points, including our other external stakeholder communication as well.

Have you planned any specific campaign to make the announcement of the new tagline?

We have been regularly planning our campaigns across various platforms, which include social media as well as digital. We will continue to bring out more campaigns with our new tagline.