How storytelling has become a powerful tool in shaping Godrej Capital’s identity

In this interaction with Adgully, Nalin Jain, Chief Marketing Officer, Godrej Capital, how the company is leveraging the 126-year old legacy of the Godrej brand, encouraging digital advancements, tapping into the opportunities offered by AI, machine language, ChatGPT, and much more.

It’s been over 2 years as a new entity within the 126-year-old group. How do you look at marketing campaigns from a “new age company” lens for Godrej Capital?

While Godrej Capital is a relatively new organisation, the legacy and trust of the Godrej brand are more than 126 years old. This puts Godrej Capital in a uniquely advantageous position, where we already had customer trust and brand recognition as a starting point. Building on this strong foundation, we focus on delivering campaigns that reflect our core proposition of being tech-first, highly customer-centric, and enabling flexible repayments. Take, for instance, our campaign on ‘Zero touch loans’, which offers customers a seamless digital borrowing experience, making the process quick and hassle-free. Similarly, ‘Design your EMI’ empowers borrowers to customise their repayment plans to suit their financial preferences, giving them greater control over their loans. Our latest campaign for business loans, #IssLoanMeinLoadNahi, resonates with entrepreneurs, showcasing how a loan can act as an enabler rather than a burden. By communicating these new-age concepts through our campaigns, we strive to bring a balance between the fresh appeal of Godrej Capital and the trust of the Godrej Brand.

What are your marketing strategies and how does your approach differ from the competitors to stand out in the NBFC industry?

Godrej Capital’s innovative loan products, built around enabling flexible repayments, reward programs, quick approvals, and excellent customer experience, give Godrej Capital a distinct edge in the market. Our marketing strategy revolves around differentiated communication, utilising robust creative devices and engaging storytelling delivered with precision targeting. Our unique concept that resonates with the audience sets us apart, exemplified by our latest #IssLoanMeinLoadNahi campaign, which challenges loan perceptions and presents loans as enablers. Our key differentiators lie in our customer-centric approach and impactful storytelling.

How is AI/ML reshaping marketing as a function?

While Artificial Intelligence helps gather and understand customer behaviour, interests, and preferences, Machine Learning allows us to build and maintain customer relations better. They help in analysing user sentiment and receiving customer feedback, which allows marketing as a function to be more significant and personalised. It provides data that can be extrapolated for better value offerings, a more targeted marketing approach, and improved customer experience. To sum it up, it centralises data, improves A/B testing, targeted lead generation, and customer segmentation, enabling us to strategise better. 

What do you think of ChatGPT? And how will it impact marketing campaigns at large?

At Godrej Capital, we encourage digital advancements, recognising their potential to transform the marketing landscape. As per reports, AI in marketing is estimated to become a $107.5 billion industry by 2028. ChatGPT, therefore, can be a handy tool and can be leveraged to utilise better the human efforts that go into building and executing a marketing campaign. The most optimum way to use it would be to add diversity to the thought process and use ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner to add variation to otherwise method-driven outcomes. Moreover, we foresee ChatGPT playing a crucial role in automating mundane tasks such as recurring issues on chat support, addressing FAQs, and optimising, improving, and driving better engagement on social platforms. However, we are committed to ensuring data privacy and adhering to ethical guidelines in all AI implementations.

What important role does storytelling play in branding and marketing?

In today’s fast-paced world with ever-short attention spans and humongous content ready for consumption, compelling storytelling plays a vital role in building lasting connections with the customers and audience. Furthermore, in today’s competitive marketplace with numerous options available to a customer, organisations need to strategically invest in winning customer loyalty. Beyond merely communicating business goals, effective storytelling fosters an emotional connection that resonates with audiences, engendering trust and loyalty. One way to achieve the same is to have a strong brand that customers can trust for years. By humanising our brand and crafting narratives that align with our customers’ values, storytelling becomes a powerful tool in shaping Godrej Capital’s identity and leaving a lasting impression on our audience.