We are helping the youth of India to experience Next-Gen banking: Azmat Habibulla

South Indian Bank, a legacy bank, has restructured itself as a technology-first phygital bank that offers speed and convenience to all of its customers. To reaffirm this, they have launched a campaign, titled ‘Trust meets Tech since 1929’, which seamlessly blends Trust and Technology. A story-based TV commercial involving a high-speed race car with an aspiration theme is part of the campaign strategy.

Race cars and drivers represent speed, accuracy, teamwork, trust, and a desire to excel using cutting-edge racing technology. Already a strong brand in Kerala with a 94-year history, the bank emphasises its strong relationship with its customers, who are loyal customers. The TVC commercial, however, is part of a larger campaign to portray the bank as an agile private bank offering cutting-edge banking services, as well as to raise awareness in non-Kerala markets, where the bank’s digital banking prowess is less well-known.

In conversation with Adgully, Azmat Habibulla, Chief Marketing Officer, South Indian Bank, elaborates on the campaign strategy, enhancing its phygital offering for consumers, helping the youth of India to experience the Next-gen banking, and much more.

On how South Indian Bank is helping the consumers with the next generation of marketing with the Trust Meets Tech campaign, Azmat Habibulla said, “Our tagline is – Experience Next-gen banking, and our campaign line is Trust Meets Tech Since 1929. We are helping the youth of India to specially experience the Next-gen banking through our evolved products and services. One of our flagship products is the ‘SIB Mirror Plus’ app, which is bank at your fingertips and is available in nine languages, which only a few banks offer. It also has award winning safety features like e-lock and e-limit, you can get a pre-approved PL for instant credit in your account, you can renew a gold loan in five minutes, open new account and many more products.”

Adding further, she said, "We have a host of digital solutions which give you enhanced consumer experience, speed and safety to make the banking experience truly next-gen.”

Speaking about the media mix, she noted, “For the campaign, currently we are focusing on Digital as our primary medium; and across digital it will be programmatic, connected TV, social, OTT. We are supporting this largely via television to get impact on our campaign and will be amplifying this via an OOH campaign in Kerala, which is our strong market. Going ahead in the year, we will be looking at theatre as well.”

Habibulla further added, “We haven’t looked at radio as a key medium for the brand campaign, however, radio is something that we look at as a medium for product specific communication and it works very well for products like gold loan. We have used it in the past to reach out to consumers across multiple cities and that is something that we would be continuing.”

These are edited excerpts of the interview. For the entire conversation, watch below: