Blue Buzz bags digital and content marketing mandate for Born To Shine

Bandhan Bank recently launched its ‘Jahaan bandhan, wahaan trust’ campaign, an integrated marketing effort featuring the bank’s first pan-India brand ambassador Sourav Ganguly.

Blue Buzz Bags Digital And Content Marketing Mandate For Born To Shine

Talking about the impact of the campaign Apurva Sircar, Head of Marketing of the Kolkata-headquartered banking group, shared an interesting conversation he had with his sales manager in Mumbai. “When I was visiting the Vashi branch of Bandhan Bank in Mumbai, I asked the local sales manager whether recent marketing efforts were paying off any dividends. He told me, since the ads have started coming out, when they call potential customers, people know who we are and ask ‘Sourav Ganguly wala, na?’ Earlier most didn’t know who we were.”

Blue Buzz Bags Digital And Content Marketing Mandate For Born To Shine

So, clearly, then the campaign is working.

Blue Buzz Bags Digital And Content Marketing Mandate For Born To Shine

Bandhan Bank began life as a not-for-profit microfinances service in West Bengal, with an emphasis on providing rural ladies and other underserved groups with financial services. In 2015, it became the first microfinance institution to become a universal bank in India with a full banking license granted by the RBI.

Blue Buzz Bags Digital And Content Marketing Mandate For Born To Shine

“Since then Bandhan has built a strong presence in the Eastern market, and now we want to push the brand across the rest of the country, and the campaign featuring Sourav Ganguly, is meant to appeal to wider audiences in the North, West and South,” says Sircar, adding that the bank is looking at opening 500 branches this year around India as a part of that effort.

Blue Buzz Bags Digital And Content Marketing Mandate For Born To Shine

“And when it comes to mass appeal and reaching out to as wide an audience as possible in India, only two things come to mind: Bollywood and cricket, and we decided to go with cricket as it transcends geography and language and other differentiators,” elaborates Sircar.

Blue Buzz Bags Digital And Content Marketing Mandate For Born To Shine

The campaign was conceived by Leo Burnett Orchard, which was brought in as Bandhan Bank’s creative agency in August 2022, while the film and stills were shot by Prodigious. In the film, Ganguly is seen reminiscing the days when he wasn’t a star and there were only a few spectators at the ground.

“Dada made a perfect pairing for Bandhan. He’s not only representative of Kolkata, but is known to national and global audiences. And much like Bandhan helped in transforming lives since its inception in 2001, it was under Sourav’s captainship in the early 2000s that saw the start of the transformation of Team India into the powerhouse it is today,” smiles Sircar, mentioning that in the 2011 World Cup, 60 per cent of the total runs scored and 70 per cent of the total wickets taken by the 15 member Indian team were by players who had either debuted or blossomed under Ganguly’s captaincy.

That being said, Ganguly won’t be part of every bit of content or messaging put out by the bank, with Sircar saying, “We don’t want to dilute the power of the brand ambassador and we don’t want the bank’s identity to get inextricably linked to a brand ambassador either. We’ll be using him in a few select campaigns, while other marketing efforts will be more focused on specific products and TGs.”

As Bandhan is still building its pan-India profile, TV, with its last-mile messaging, will remain the key medium used by the bank, with digital, print, OOH, cinema and other media rounding off the team effort.

“Over the last seven and a half years, the marketing was centred around supporting the bank’s growth. We did campaigns here and there, spent money where we needed to, but now the brand’s ambitions have grown loftier,” says Sircar, concluding, “Initial growth is always easier than incremental growth so now our marketing efforts are going to ensure that incremental growth is supported well enough that our business channels and verticals can benefit from the marketing.” 

 

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