DSP Mutual Fund launches a father-son ‘Dramayana’ video campaign

DSP Mutual Fund launched a video campaign called ‘Dramayana’ - a series of irreverent and whacky videos that use a generous dollop of humor-laced drama to help showcase its tax saving product - DSP Tax Saver Fund, in a manner never used before in the industry.

This series takes a look into the life and adventures of an angry old father brimming with rage. Appa is troubled by his son, Arun in more ways than one. When all of Arun's problems can be solved simply by making some good decisions, why would he not get smarter and make Appa proud? This pandemoniacal series covers this madhouse father-son duo who can show people how to make their lives better.

Every year come January, salaried professionals start evaluating tax saving investment options under Section 80C of the Indian IT Act, 1961. Many financial brands start pushing their tax saving options to woo these customers. However, the constant hammering from across categories leaves the customer with mixed messages, or at best, variants of the same two messages- save tax and grow wealth. This makes it difficult for the viewer to judge what could work better for them. DSP therefore decided to stay away from the traditional routes of messaging for this product category and collaborated with 101 India to conceptualize ‘Dramayana’, a novel template that helps tell different stories easily, effortlessly, and very quickly. 

Aditi Kothari, Director & Head - Sales, Marketing and e- Business, DSP Mutual Fund says, “Our idea was to create a property which communicates our product and connects to the audience with humour. We have always been keen to make finance fun and our team has done something extremely creative to execute on that mandate and will continue to do so. When brands try to be too functional, it can come across as boring and repetitive to investors. But we chose a route which will hopefully be more memorable in the minds of tax savers! Who says mutual funds have to be boring?”

Abhik Sanyal, Head - Consumer Marketing, DSP Mutual Fund says, “We kept it simple: Let’s try telling stories the way viewers would enjoy it more- mostly unbranded, organic and conversational. At a time when internet memes have taken over everyone’s timelines, quirkiness becomes a must to engage viewers. So instead of focusing only on pushing our product, we chose to have fun. In fact, our brief in bold was to not create typical BFSI ads! We had no formulaic scripts, invented a new language and built in our own hat tip to new-world irreverence. ‘Dramayana’ will also help supplement our out-of-home promotions for our tax saver fund, as part of our ‘Axe Your Tax’ campaign.”

Cyrus Oshidar, MD and CCO, 101India says, “Engaging storytelling has always been the core of all branded initiatives we undertake at 101. The challenge of taking a financial brand where the product is technical and weaving their communication with humour is what made this so much fun for us. It’s always nice to see brands use humour to get their message across and in my opinion the nature of the series could give it a long run across social media.”