Storytelling will be key to BFSI brands in 2020: Shilpa Desai, Fullerton India

After executing Rishta Sammaan Ka, Fullerton India is all set for 2020 with plans of going big on data, BFSI storytelling and more.

Last year, Fullerton India went big with Rishta Sammaan Ka. The campaign helped them strengthen the brand connect with potential and existing customers. The festive timing of the campaign was a plus, helping them gain higher awareness and positive sentiment for the brand through BFSI storytelling.

In conversation with Social Samosa, Shilpa Desai, GM - Head, Marketing & CSR, Fullerton India dissects the campaign, the importance of storytelling for BFSI, and more. Here are edited excerpts.

Rishta Sammaan Ka had an emotional appeal to it. Could you briefly tell us about the creative idea and intention behind it?

We share an economical and emotional connect that we wished to express and reiterate to our valuable customers. Although we showcase this through our actions, nothing says it better through a visually appealing mode. The campaign's storyline was centred on the belief that every customer has their own dreams and aspirations, and is looking for viable avenues to fulfil them. It also highlighted our brand proposition of making things simpler in our journey to empower people.

Could you shed some light on Fullerton India's communication strategy in non-metro cities and rural pockets?

Every business has a different set of requirements. In rural locations, communication is personalised to a large extent. It is further strengthened by word of mouth, along with a robust on-ground presence. Our branches are strategically located and the team makes it a point to meet them on a monthly basis to understand and be a trusted partner for them. Our various user-friendly apps help them to seek information and interact with us on a regular basis. Today, we have over 412 Rural branches with a presence in 600 towns and 58,000 villages.

How significant is vernacular to the brand communication put forth by Fullerton India? Which languages do you focus on most?

A large part of our business is Tier 2 and onwards, and this includes semi-urban and rural areas. Language plays a critical role in communicating and connecting with our customers. On an ongoing basis, we use language as spoken and written promotional material to interact with our customers. The largely referred languages which also became a part of our campaign include Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Punjabi, Odiya and Bengali. You can look up these ads on YouTube.

For Fullerton India, which digital trends would you be tapping into during 2020?

To make our digital strategy effective, we have strengthened our investments in analytics and technology, incorporating data with our business models to improve customer engagement. We have perceived that the art of storytelling has had a far more meaningful and engaging impact with our customers, so we will be laying more emphasis on language application and storytelling.

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In terms of marketing, what are the key areas that Fullerton India would be focusing in 2020?

In 2020, we would be like to live by our promise and fine-tune our collective efforts to make a larger impact than before. The organisation has invested in technology to capture and be a part of the evolving trends. Going forward we expect to see extensive use of AI in sourcing and converting intentional visitors to interested customers.

Data-driven communication has helped us share explicit financial solutions, helping customers revisit us for detailed need-based queries. While we have been working on this, going forward we will improve our efficiencies to make it more meaningful. We will continue to lay equal emphasis on external and internal communications and make more use of lesser text and more visuals. These will be supported by vibrant colours and infographics to be appealing to mobile-based millenials who form a significant customer segment group.

What are the digital marketing trends that the BFSI sector would pick up on in 2020?

At Fullerton India, digital solutions integrated with our technology stack has offered great potential to reach out to larger audiences across geographical locations. The benefits of digital extend beyond conventional segments. The use of language and storytelling along with segment profiling and communication will enable the sector to serve the vast, diverse population to meet their distinct needs.

How can BFSI brands leverage interactive online content?

In a sector where we are striving to build relationships and sustained active engagement levels, meaningful content that appeals to the reader is likely to be more purposeful. This will lead to better response and interaction, leading to a higher brand connect and recall, which is what every organisation wishes to accomplish. It is important to work towards creating higher experiences and engagement than the old ways of communicating.