ICICIdirect launches social media campaign to educate netizens

ICICI Securities today launched a social media campaign for its portal ICICIdirect.com, to educate netizens on attainting their financial goals through a fun and interactive mode.

Using the three most popular social media platforms – YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, ICICIdirect aims to increase its ability to reach and engage with its growing audience of followers interested in investor education and learning more about meeting their financial goals. (Youtube link - https://www.youtube.com/user/icicisecuritiesltd, Facebook link: facebook.com/idirectmoneymanager, Twitter: twitter.com/gyaanomobo)

The unique feature about the campaign is that financial wisdom is imparted in a fun and interactive manner. Special animated characters “GYANO”, the magician and “MOBO”, the money boss have been created to interpret financial jargons and resolve complicated solutions through friendly suggestions. The highlight of this platform is the game, “Virtual Stocks”, where Facebook visitors, who like the page can experiment, experience and learn stock market during LIVE trading hours in a safe environment, thereby eliminating all possibilities of monetary loss.

The new initiative also gives an investment tool to every individual so as to plan their finances as per their needs and requirements.

“Today social media is a very influential medium especially with the youth. Hence we decided to embrace this platform to create a more personalised relation as well as provide a fun and interactive way to learn about personal finance as well as equity markets,” said Mr Vineet Arora, Executive Vice President and Head – Product Distribution, ICICI Securities Ltd. He further added, “We believe that this format will encourage a systematic thinking towards goal based investments and Virtual Stocks will help investors overcome their fear and understand the stock market better.”

ICICIdirect tops the list in the investment segment Google searches according to a recent report by Google search trends in India and an independent research report conducted by TNS Australia on the influence of Internet on the purchase decision of financial products by Indian Internet users.

Over the past few years, ICICIdirect has been focusing on investor education. ICICIdirect Centre for Financial Learning is an initiative of ICICI Securities set up with an objective of simplifying financial knowledge and increasing financial literacy amongst prospective or experienced investors & knowledge seekers. ICICIdirect conducts training programs in over 45 cities across the country to empower retail investors to take informed decisions on their investments through the ICICIdirect Centre for Financial Learning.

ICICIdirect produces a number of financial educational resources for both its 2.5 mn customers as well as general public. One can now access many of these educational resources by simply following ICICIdirect on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube.

ICICIdirect has been the recipient of several awards, most noteworthy being –the 'BSE IPF D&B Equity Broking Awards 2012' , the Outlook Money ' Best e- Brokerage Award' for seven years in a row and recently the 'Stock Broker of the Year' award at the Money Today FPCIL Awards 2012.