HDFC Asset Management: A Lesson in Finance
Q] What does your marketing mix look like for your Investor Education campaigns? Could you shed light on the mediums and platforms that you use for these campaigns? Q] How did you go about the ‘Zindagi Ke Liye SIP’ campaign? Q] What was the motivation for this campaign? Q] What is HDFC AMC doing in terms of its communications that is separating it from the rest or keeping it ahead of others? Q] What in your opinion, is the number one factor that defines you as a brand? Q] Sometime back HDFC MF organised street plays to educate customers regarding investing in mutual funds. Can you talk more about this initiative?
Our company actively participates in investor education programmes for mutual funds, in accordance to the guidelines provided by SEBI/AMFI. It is important to note that these education initiatives are entirely separate from the marketing initiatives carried out by us to promote business activities. We use a blend of traditional and newer media platforms, including OTT (over-the-top platform), Cinema, Television, Radio, and Out-of-Home. New mediums such as OTT and Digital are now in vogue, and I often get asked, ‘What has changed in educational and awareness campaigns?’ The right question to ask is, ‘What hasn’t changed?’. The answer to that is, human behaviour. The core of educational campaigns, which is understanding and influencing human behaviour, remains unchanged.
The choice of medium depends on the campaign and its objective. For our latest campaign, we focused on the concept of discipline and consistency. The concept was well outlined by Canadian Author and Journalist Malcolm Gladwell in his book ‘Outliers’ as the ‘10000 hours’ rule. It says that to be truly successful at anything in life, we need to put in consistent efforts over long periods. We connected this idea to SIPs, emphasizing that wealth creation also requires regular and consistent investments. We wanted this nuanced message to be conveyed with emotions, and hence we chose Cinema and Television as the primary mediums.
We decided to move away from the functional aspect of SIPs and connect it with emotions. We realised that the principle of continuous effort, which is so prevalent in our daily lives, aligns perfectly with the concept of SIPs. This insight helped us shift the narrative from functional to emotional.
The finance industry is predominantly left-brained, focusing on logic and analytics. We at HDFC AMC have chosen to incorporate the right brain, which involves creativity and emotion. This is reflected in the way we communicate. Hopefully, this will appeal to and connect well with the audience and help in improving the penetration of Mutual Funds.
Our primary advantage is our customer-centric approach. We develop products that we believe can find a place in our customers’ portfolios, focusing on offering differentiated products. This approach has defined us for over two decades. For instance, when we launched an international product a few years ago, we could have focused on specific popular markets. Instead, we chose to create a diversified fund that included markets like Japan and Europe, which were not in the limelight then. This decision was based on our belief that such a product would fit better into our customers’ portfolios.
Our entire strategy revolves around knowledge. We believe in adhering to the rules and regulations, both in letter and spirit. Regarding our Nukkad Nataks, we’ve taken inspiration from India’s tradition of street plays, which were a popular form of storytelling and education in the 1980s, centred around religion and society. We’ve used this format to educate people at the grassroots level about investing in mutual funds.
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