How To Balance Your බබා

Background

Credit Cards are known for its offers, promotions and discounts where the banks try to differentiate themselves by giving different offers. The market is very competitive with 10 active credit card issuers where over a 60% is dominated by three big players. Due to this competitiveness many consumers have been bombarded by discounts at various places by multiple Credit Cards and within this clutter we were struggling to ensure that our card is known for something and in this notion we figured out that there is an opportunity in the leisure market which was not dominated by any bank hence we focused on Holiday category and started offering discounts at leading hotel chains. Over a period of time, this led to consumers using their Seylan Credit Card and or applying for one for the simple fact of going on a holiday, be it local or overseas.

During the summer holidays (July to September), all Credit Cards tie-up with leading hotel chains to claim the share of swipe as many Sri Lankans go on vacation with their families. Due to the domination of 3 leading Credit Cards; HSBC, NTM Amex and Sampath Credit Cards, many hotels join hands with them exclusively to fill up their rooms as they have the large number of plastics as well as spend portfolio. Therefore, we were trapped without a leading chain for a tie-up.

With that in mind, we came up with a novel concept by understanding the barriers created by Credit Cards such as restrictions on selection (A Credit Card offering discount at Z Hotel, B Credit Card Card offering discount at Y Hotel) and locations (Z Hotel chain doesn’t have a property in Jaffna) to give the ultimate freedom of choice to the consumers by giving birth to or campaign Travel The Island with Seylan Cards.

Given the land expanse and the modes of transport that are available, travelling around the island is pretty easy. But what makes a holiday even more exciting is that you get to pick any location from any part of the island and avail mammoth savings to make your surfing, Nature treks, wild expeditions or scrumptious dining experience more meaningful. Whether you fancy a scenic sun-set on a pristine beach located in the west coast, visiting historic sites of the north central province, glamping amidst the wildlife of the south east coast, or enjoying the cool climes and majestic mountains of the hill country, Seylan Cards got it all covered.

The Challenge

The challenges are following;

• Breaking the clutter among all hotel deals

There needs to be clutter breaking communications right throughout the campaign so that the customers are constantly reminded due to multi-cardholders (Customers carrying 2 or more cards in the wallet) and discounts offered to customers by banks.

• Limited budgets

Getting in to the minds of the consumers more effectively with cut-through and high frequency communication will trigger their purchase decisions. In this instance, our budgets were extremely tight hence with the escalating media cost we were finding it very challenging to sustain our campaign for one month. Although TV has the best reach (86%) in the island investing on this medium is very expensive and due to this very reason we dropped TV and concentrated purely on Print and Radio where the budget was still not sufficient to sustain the campaign for one month.

Communication Objectives

Overall campaign objectives

• To be the preferred card during the holiday season and to ensure usage among multi cardholders aiming at a 20% increase from July to September 2018 in holiday category.

However in order to amplify this campaign in digital and to give extra lifetime on the communication, the digital video was launched in September to achieve the set communication objectives below;

• To create higher visibility and word of mouth in order to generate 200 leads for cards sales.
• To break the clutter and to be the most talked about brand within the campaign period.

Strategy

Target Audience

The youthful, Colombo-centric, working population, who are more upwardly mobile in terms of lifestyle and are adventure and entertainment seekers. This segment looks at novelty and experience and are also falling in to the early adopters in the consumer life cycle. They have a disposable income for leisure and entertainment and also project themselves with their accessories as well as usage on certain brands as a status symbol.

The importance of this segment is that they are high/frequent users and also who are aware of their credit pattern. Seylan Bank’s portfolio is weak in this segment and only way for us to tap this segment was through Credit Cards as the bank doesn’t have any proposition catering to this audience Thus making them a profitable and a lucrative sector

Insight

Above audience do not have much time on traditional media. However they are open for discussion and gossip among the community via digital mediums. One common entertainment platform we see among this audience was “Puswedilla” and “Freddy” where the entertainment and the jokes have been shared among them.

Tactics

Since we were cornered to the walls with budgets there was a massive challenge in communication to reach the set business goals which we immediately thought of leveraging on the aforesaid insight which is

• Use current social topics to create humor
• Use two popular characters which appeals to this audience who could support the above mentioned humor factor
• Use of digital mediums, so that the communication can be shared among multiple audiences with one insertion to make it cost effective as well as easy to manage.

However in terms of the overall campaign we had to use support mediums to give away important details such as the discounts and locations. Therefore we used Print Media, Radio, SMS and Website for customer communication.

We also went into link traditional media to the digital content where the traditional media content was used as part of the campaign on digital thereby the interest generated segment was driven towards more details on the traditional media side.

Idea

To create a short video clip using Dino Correra and Gehan Blok, two famous characters, in a typical situation which appeals to the set target audience. The nature of innovation and creativity was built by using topics which were trend-jacking, timely relevant and link those to the destinations we marketed as well as the entire concept of traveling throughout the island using Seylan credit card. We used the language and terms which were clutter breaking and attention seeking. Eg – How to balance your baba.

The video was based on a typical office situation where Dino plays the role of a boss. Dino who is out of ideas to please his wife and starts seeking help from his colleague/best friend Gehan who takes on multiple roles to convince Dino’s wife on destinations. The whole story revolves around many destinations in Sri Lanka and some of its funny incidents to showcase the fact that Seylan Credit Cards have an offer anywhere you travel across the island.

We used the framework of AIDA;

Attention: where the attentions clearly grabbed by the agile marketing and humor.

Interest: created through the two characters and the elaboration of trend-jacking topics.

Desire: was created by showcasing the large number of destinations as well as the big discounts which clearly cut through competition

Action: call to action was driven through the end of the content where the appeal was made to use the Seylan Credit Card.

Execution

The whole idea of the production was to launch it through an independent Facebook channel to create interest and virality without making it a typical advertisement hence we released this in W Now channel.

The production costed us Rs. 800,000 which included the cost of actors and production. The video was launched in September 2018.

Impact

The video created so much buzz in the digital space that numerous merchants requested to feature this campaign and some brands committed for 2019 as well. Also the virality of this video cemented the positioning of the card for Holidays as well as to establish the concept of Travel the Island. The results are stated below;

Customer Engagement

Facebook

The video was launched first on Facebook. Only a USD 100 was used to boost the video

The above stats are self-explanatory. Despite only boosting a USD 100 our video has gone beyond viral due to the originality of the concept. We have reached over 650,000 views organically. We have also reached the audience pre-dominantly from western province, age 25-34 making it the right Credit Card target audience. Furthermore, 95% plus of the engagement has been positive. Some of the comments extracted can be viewed in the comments section appended to this document.

Instagram

Instgram post was boosted with USD 50 through W Now account. We managed to get 193,000 plus impressions in which 93% were not following W Instagram account. Although the audience associated with Instagram is pre-dominantly young, we still managed to reach 36% from the overall to our target audience of 25-34.

YouTube

We did not boost this video on YouTube hence our overall reach and impressions have been organic. However, a staggering 34.7% of traffic has been generated via WhatsApp.

Digital Engagement – shares on other pages/channels

The video was shared by “Api Sri” facebook page and managed to reach over 1.1 million views whereas 1,100 comments were generated along with 24,000 plus shares which was not boosted at all.

We also saw a huge number of shares through WhatApp however, cannot be traced due to non-availability of analytics. Our YouTube analytics confirm the 34% of the traffic generated was through WhatsApp.

Spend

The category spend grew by 53% (YOY). Furthermore, the month of September had a YOY growth of 59% on the spend.

Acquisition/ leads

Due to traction generated by the campaign Seylan Credit Cards was buzzing in the market hence a pull was created with offers across the island. During the campaign period a YOY growth of 122% was achieved in sales. Furthermore, our Platinum Credit Card acquisition grew by 218% making Seylan Credit Cards more relevant to the right target audience (spending power).

Word of Mouth

As per our market intelligence and through the grapevine we have learnt that this campaign was highly spoken as an impactful campaign at different forums, marketing lectures, digital classes, management meetings and events. People extensively shared this via WhatsApp as well.

We were also told that the video was used as a ‘Case Study’ on how to engage with customers, how to make your content relevant and content marketing related topics.

Comments – Facebook

Comments – Instagram

Comments – YouTube