HDFC Bank launched it's new campaign #HDFCBankFestiveTreats

Diwali sees no shortage of festive offers. When people are bombarded with Diwali deals, and all brands have the same assets to play with, how does any one brand stand out and ensure recall? 

As a leader in digital innovation, HDFC Bank is always adopting unique ways and means to leverage digital platforms. To that end, HDFC Bank - along with its Social Media and Digital Creative Agency, Kinnect - executed Diwali 2019’s most clever campaign yet, a first-of-its-kind in the industry and highly personalised and contextual to the relevant audience. 

With the ‘Make Every #WishComeTrue with #HDFCBankFestiveTreats’ campaign, the brand capitalized on influencer ads of every other brand out there. Almost every influencer ad on Instagram stories was followed with an HDFC Bank story of how to buy that product with an HDFC Bank offer. An ad for an ad. 

Kinnect collaborated with trendsetters across fashion, lifestyle, beauty, tech and travel segments on Instagram to understand which brands they were promoting this festive season. Once the other brand stories were live, they got the influencers to immediately post the HDFC Bank offer for that particular brand. This made the promotion extremely personalised. With today’s digital audience having a low attention span and also wanting quick solutions, this was the perfect move.

Whoever you are, you saw at least one such pair of interlinked stories on Instagram during the festive period. Moreover, since HDFC Bank cards are platform-agnostic, consumers were inspired for both their online and offline purchase decisions across categories. Brand recall was further aided by the visual cohesiveness of accompanying static posts by top celebrities, and their striking 3-D quality.

Discussing this campaign, Ravi Santhanam, Chief Marketing Officer, HDFC Bank said, “HDFC Bank has always been a digitally-forward bank, and this campaign is an ingenious way to create brand affinity and talkability amidst the over-cluttered festive space on digital. All our marketing efforts focus on being native and non-intrusive to users. This campaign did just that through the clever takeover of Instagram through influencers”.

Chandni Shah, COO of Kinnect said, “Marketing during the festive season is tricky, as a consumer is spoilt for choice and therefore may experience difficulty in decision-making. We wanted HDFC Bank to stand out, and actually make the decision-making process simple and intuitive for the consumer. Following existing brand stories was the perfect (albeit, unexpected!) way to do this. What a way to create brand recall by swimming along the Diwali tide, instead of against it!”