How TBWAIndia helped IDFC Mutual Fund break through to fixed risk-averse thinkers

The Mutual Fund industry has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years and is becoming one of the most preferred investment options today. The Indian Mutual Fund industry’s Average Assets Under Management (AAUM) stood at ₹ 32.30 lakh crore (INR 32.30 trillion) for the month of February 2021. It has been observed that Indians are increasingly moving away from physical savings to financial savings, however the realisation that to beat inflation they will have to change from traditional savings options to equities and mutual funds is happening at a much slower pace as it will take some time for deep-rooted habits to change. Brands in Mutual Fund businesses are increasingly becoming more aggressive to promote their product portfolio. In the recent past, we have seen some interesting consumer campaigns by Mutual Fund companies to heighten awareness and nudge investors to invest. 

This time, as part of our TALKING INSIGHTS series, Adgully spoke to Subramanian Krishnan, Chief Strategy Officer, TBWAIndia, who shared his insights and strategy to create the new campaign for IDFC Mutual Fund – ‘Paison Ko Roko Mat’. 

Mutual fund is a low involvement category where there is still some apprehension when it comes to investing. What was the brief given by the client for their new campaign ‘Paison Ko Roko Mat’?

Investor education from various mutual funds has tried to convert audiences from saving in fixed assets like FDs and gold to investing in Equity Mutual Funds. However, all this educational effort by many mutual fund brands has only affected a small section of the investing audiences in India.

This is because all these communications pre-suppose correlation of risk with returns. In essence, they encourage the consumer to take more risk for increased returns. But, as a collective culture, we are inherently risk averse. For us, preservation of wealth is more important than its growth. This is why we still prefer to invest in gold and fixed deposits.

IDFC Mutual Fund challenged us, at TBWAIndia, to find a fresh way to induce such ‘fixed’ risk averse thinkers into mutual fund investors. How could the brand take the lead in promoting mutual funds as the primary (and better) savings alternative to the fixed deposit consumer, no matter the size of the savings? 

What was the objective of this campaign? How did you latch on to this insight?  Was any focussed group study done to cull out the campaign insight? How did the creative come up with the campaign idea?

We had to break the consumer equating mutual funds with risk. In many other spheres of their lives, they were changing with the times. They had found newer and better alternatives to most things they consumed every day. Most aspects of life had upgraded with better technology.

One exception was the investments in Fixed Deposits, which had remained fixed in their portfolio from time immemorial. Their saving and investing habits were frozen in time. They were aware of MFs, its benefits and even had thought of investing in it. But as a default habit, they followed the path of inert growth as the safe way to park their money.

We used this insight into the lives of our audience to amplify the fear of stagnation. The fact that ‘fixed’ may be comfortable, but it is also ‘stagnant’. This could lead to conflicted feelings of inadequacy as the world moved forward.

Simply put, if you’re not growing, you’re stagnating. In investing, as in life, it is the velocity of money that creates wealth. Hence, #PaisonKoRokoMat. 

What is the end objective of this film? Is there any expectation set by the client in terms of increasing the awareness scores for the brand?

With #PaisonKoRokoMat, we wanted to reach out to conservative investors and give them a wake-up call as to how their investment ideas are outdated today. It aimed at educating potential investors about the redundancy of money invested in age-old investments and trigger a response in favour of mutual funds.

As TBWAIndia CEO Govind Pandey says, “We want these ads to charmingly nudge you to re-evaluate your investment choices that you make almost by default.”

Kaiyomurz P Daver, Head - Marketing at IDFC Asset Management Company Limited, adds here, “The end objective of these films is to convert savers to investors by encouraging them to move to mutual funds, the smart and modern vehicle for their investments, instead of being stuck with traditional vehicles.” 

How are you supplementing this television campaign and extending to other mediums to create an impact and visibility? Digital versus Mass media, what’s going to be the overall media strategy for this campaign? What’s the duration of this campaign?

It is an integrated campaign with presence on both Digital and Mass media. The duration of the TV campaign was of 30 days, which was supported by a high impact campaign on Out Of Home, Print and Digital media in the last fortnight of the TV campaign.

According to Jignesh Dawda, Vice President – Marketing, IDFC Asset Management Company Limited, “This is about increasing positive behaviours for the category on the whole. To this end, we planned a holistic campaign with multiple executions across Television, OOH, Digital and Social media. We also reached out to extended sales teams to enable them to reach prospects with positive messages of the category.”

Apart from television, the campaign was present on other mediums as well. The TVC was aired across 32 channels with 5,500+ spots in 5 languages. Targeted Digital media was served with nearly 150 million impressions. This was supported by Out Of Homein 28 cities with more than 495 sites with 630 million impressions. Lastly, Print was deployed strategically with regional print in 30 cities. 

ROI is important for any campaign in today’s times. How do you plan to measure campaign effectiveness?

Till date, the digital campaign has already garnered 149 million impressions with 0.57 million clicks with a Click Through Rate (CTR) of 0.38%, which compares very well with the BFSI industry benchmark of CTR is 0.15% to 0.5%. This has been correlated with various qualitative anecdotes about enjoying the communication and its success in changing investor opinions.