In Conversation With Elizabeth Venkataraman, Head of Marketing at Kotak Mahindra Bank

Elizabeth Venkataraman, Senior EVP and Head of Marketing, Kotak Mahindra Bank, talks about some of their remarkable campaigns and how Kotak is constant striving for a deeper customer relationship each day.

Q. Your association with Kotak goes back to nearly 15 years. How has Kotak reinvented itself in all these years?

A. Kotak is constantly reinventing itself every day, every year. In fact, that is one of the reasons Kotak continues to occupy a leadership position in an aggressive marketplace comprising not just banks, but NBFCs and wallets as well.

We were among the first movers on digital, we have one of the most highly rated mobile banking apps in India, and we reinvented it altogether with Kotak 811, India’s first downloadable digital bank account. Last year, we launched our #IndiaInvited campaign featuring the bank’s brand ambassador, Ranveer Singh. The campaign champions inclusive banking so that banking services are made accessible to every Indian.  

We realise that reinvention is not about waiting for the future to happen and then reacting to it, it’s about thinking about our business from a future lens and reimagining what customers’ expectations are from a bank. At a deeper level, it is about reinventing every customer’s relationship with the bank with the changing times.

Q. Kotak today has garnered significant popularity and trust. How does its current market position look like? Do you consider it to be at a leadership or challenger position in the market?

A. The current market position is easily answered by the numbers. Our aim is to be a leader but with the mindset of a challenger brand.

As a leader, we have some of the best minds in the industry that truly focus on the fundamentals, which has helped us weather many a storm, and build the popularity and trust synonymous with Kotak.

However, we approach our work with the drive and agility of a challenger and never let even the slightest hint of complacency creep in.

Q. Your last campaign, #IndiaInvited was quite a hit, especially over the social media. It has been nearly one year since then. Why haven’t we seen you come out actively this year? Which touch point do you intend to focus this year in terms of marketing and advertising?

A. #IndiaInvited released last year in June and still has a long way to go.

Considering the large portfolio of financial products and the diverse audience profile for each, we tend to follow a very product specific communication and media strategy. For example: Silk, our banking program for women, thrives on content marketing. We follow a topical approach of creating content every year to present a unique point of view with respect to money and women to help women on their journey towards financial independence.

On the other hand, loan products for us do well on-ground where we optimise our owned media of a 1,500 pan-India branch network. We focused last year on the festive season and we saw excellent business traction with our property ‘Loan Festival’, where customers could avail various offers across our loan products. Our cards portfolio is driven by offers and considering its digitally fulfilled nature we follow an email marketing approach for debit and credit cards. While, for 811, we need to drive consideration and owing to the competitive nature of the category and the need for being top of mind we use TV and digital as mediums as and when needed.

In summary, the choice of the touch point is dynamic in nature and completely dependent on the type of product and audience we need to reach out to. More importantly, the business objective of the campaign – whether it is customer acquisition, usage or retention.

Q.  How do you strategize your advertising plans for all platforms (Print/ Digital/ Radio/ OOH)? How does your ad spend for 2019 look like?

A. The choice of the advertising platform is dependent on our communication and business objective. For e.g. for the launch of the limited edition Ranveer Singh debit card, the task was to drive awareness and acquisition. Hence, we used OOH extensively with our ‘Card Mila Kya’ campaign. The medium was highly visible, while the content was topical and aroused the interest of our target audience.

For products in which we need to drive consideration and are digitally fulfilled in nature, we use digital channels and with the help of analytics and optimised audience targeting methods, we provide relevant offers that can be redeemed online. So, it’s a seamless online journey from communication to consumption on digital.

Our brand campaigns are integrated across mediums. We tend to predominantly use TV and social, with OOH and Radio as support mediums. Print is used for new launches in our media mix. This combination has worked well for us.

On the ad spend front, money is a high involvement category but banking is not. Hence, being top of mind is important for us. Our ad spends are at the average of the standard category norm.

Q. You have experimented with different advertisement platforms. What has worked best for Kotak?

A. Our strategy of experimentation is not restricted only to media channels or advertising platforms. A couple of the initiatives that we conducted last year are as follows:

Debit Card as a category is inconspicuous in nature. It lacks the glamour of a credit card. To address this, we created a ‘wall to wallet’ strategy, which is a category first. We brought in a critically acclaimed artist to design Kotak debit cards. We launched this initiative with Paresh Maity, a Padma Shri awardee and following the overwhelming response from our customers, we have now collaborated with Seema Kohli, a renowned contemporary Indian artist, to design debit cards for our Silk portfolio.

We also did the #BenchOfUnity as an extension of the #Indiainvited campaign. It is an organically formed digital community of over 2.5 lakh Indians who believe that they can be the change our society needs to inculcate a sense of inclusion. We have also dabbled with Augmented Reality (AR) on-ground and on Facebook as part of the #IndiaInvited campaign.

Q.  With the influx of mobile wallet companies, what changes have you observed in retail banking? Why hasn’t Kotak ventured into creating a separate mobile wallet for itself?

A. Our digital banking product 811 offers customers an entire banking ecosystem on the app. In addition to helping customers transact similar to a mobile wallet, 811 offers access to a number of other features such as managing investments – investing in a SIP, applying for an RD/FD and even buying insurance. It’s a one stop shop for all the financial needs of a customer. In addition to this, customers earn an interest of up to 6% on their savings account balances.

While bank branches continue to remain very relevant, the format and size of our branches is undergoing a change. At Kotak, we are following a phygital approach where digital branches are combined with e-lobbies. Offering 24×7 smart banking complements our traditional branch banking network. This helps us cater to customers who now prefer to complete their banking transaction in a self-service and non-intrusive environment and at a time that is convenient to them.