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ICICI bank never ceases to amaze me with the amount of innovation / service offerings they bring to the customers regularly. Any industry will come with its own limitations and boundaries and it takes leaders / innovators like ICICI Banks pantaloons, walmarts, apples, googles, airtels of the world to change the game, remove barriers or revisit the assumptions. Its the sheer determination these companies demonstrate that forces everyone else to sit up straight and notice things.

The latest innovation (well not so much of innovation, but rather popularizing an emerging channel for banking) ICICI did is in the similar line. They have launched a mobile application (like the gmail mobile client) for doing mobile banking. Its called iMobile, any one [currently supported by only symbian phones] can download and install it for free (requires some validation etc.) and use it to pay bills, check balances, check your demat stock holdings [WOW], schedule transfers, locate an atm/branch, order a checkbook or get other services.

I think this is a really great idea. I am not really sure how secure the mobile communications are [for that matter after reading coding horror's post on digital certificates I am weary about computer communications also], but ICICI is pushing everyone else in the ecosystem [other banks, mobile operators, payment gateways, ISPs, IT security authorities, certification companies etc.] to comply or remain outside. The same thing happened with online banking, stock brokerages, mutual fund selling, insurance selling, fund transfers, NRI banking - you just name it. I am guessing this will catch on with early adopters like tech savvy folks, people with decent mobiles etc. I would love to install this once I figure out about the security features.

This innovation seems more amazing now that I am in US, because here the banking service is close to 50% of what we get in India. Back home we used to take several things for granted like free fund transfers, free any ATM usage [as long as you maintain some balance], unlimited calls to customer care [as long as you dont abuse anyone], world class online banking, tight integration of various services like MFs, Stock trading, insurance, bill payment, mobile recharge, loans, credit cards etc. 2 weeks ago I have opened an account with ADP which has restrictions like 2 ATM transactions per month, 2 calls to customer care per month, 1.5$ charge for balance inquiry etc. I wish I was making it up, but what a contrast.

Check the iMoble flash demo yourself to know more.

Banks and relationships are as old a pair as slice bread and butter knife. I can imagine my grand father getting shivers allover when he deposited bulk of his first salary in the bank wondering all he was left with was a stupid passbook with illegible numbers on it. The point is days have changed! The grand dads are no more, niether are the passbooks. The last time I walked into a bank was to pay up my education loan interest and it took them 40 mins to accept my payment. If I remember correctly I got my loan approved in less amount of time than that.

I saw a couple of rather cute and heavily touching Print Ads by Bank Of India sometime back in Hindu. See them for yourself here.
Simply put, BoI wanted to position itself as:
“In the age of computers and phone banking, we are still ready to build long lasting relationships with customer. You are not relationship number 758947534 to us. Rather you are another person with feelings and all that and we care about you and your relationship with us just like we did for your earlier generations”

I wanted to findout whether bank really cares so much about relationships. So I headed over their website and in a matter of few minutes I could figureout atleast 4 things that are not in tune with their market positioning (or something they wish to achieve).
1. There is no login link / box in the home page. Where is the time for 9-7 employees to go to bank to get pampered by relationship managers?
2. Advertising in Chennai and none of the pages are in any language other than Hindi / English.
3. If the web page itself is so cluttered and confusing and cant really maintain relationship with its viewer, what are you talking about relationships with your customers?
4. They have a feature called multi branch banking. Hello! but isnt banking supposed to be Multi branch always. Sorry, if I am not my great grand father.

May be you can find something else that is not inline with how they want to be percieved in the public. I think the entire money spent on the advertising is down the gutter unless the organization aligns itself to what it wants to project or how it wants the public to see them.

Previous Posts on Banks and Advertising: Welcome to Cashless world , SBI Life: Message that hits, Surprisingly Banks, Online Advertising

Image Courtecy: Hindu E paper (dates 24/09, 19/09)
Ad Agency: O&M

Incase you find it tough to read, the message is:

There is no such thing as wrinkles. Only lines that tell an interesting story. Of a lifetime of love, laughter, loss, learning and squinting to read small print. It’s okay not to tell you grandkids stories of a life well lived, when you’re still too busy living it

I must say O&M Financial is doing a great job to SBI Life Insurance. In a market where atleast a dozen players are after ourlives to insure them, in a day & time when the interest rates are hitting the rock bottoms, insurance & FS players need to raise their voice and make emotional connect with the pospects to ensure that they have a favorable disposition towards them.

What more, SBI’s average customer would have opened his account in later 80s or early 90s and grown with the bank and its ways. What could be a better way to woo him than making a retirement related pitch?

So whats left? Well, the message is good, the next important thing would be whether SBI-Life can actually match the expectations created by the ad.

Ad: via AgencyFaqs

There is a clear shift in the distribution of TV ads, its no longer FMCG or consumer durables alone, you have a variety of ads ranging from financial services, recruitment, online services and electronics. For once it’s a pleasure to watch more than the powder and paste ads.

One clear trend I can spot is the strong repositioning exercise undertaken by some of the leading banks of the country. This means new age banks like ICICI, CITI etc. who are marketing themselves on superior service and better products are in for a tough fight in terms product/service differentiation, innovation.

Let me talk about 2 such campaigns:

Surprisingly SBI:

It’s been a couple of months since the initial ads have surfaced. When I saw it first time I wasn’t impressed at all, for one a leader like SBI trying to convince us that we really don’t know their scale and services and then explaining what they are didn’t fit in well. Some of the promises made in the ads like 8to8 banking etc sounded like far from reality. I have an SBI account for the last 8 years and I know the service levels they are capable of.

But during my visit to home, I have interacted with my aunt who is working in SBI and surprised to find out the scale of internal restructuring and HR policy reshaping taking place in the bank. Certainly the ads now make more sense. Finally the service organizations in the country started moving from ‘we offer you a great favor’ mode to ‘we are trying to sell what you want’ mode. Good for us.

More on Surprisingly SBI: Agency Faqs, BL, Blogs [ Sucheta Dalal, Kaushal Sheth ]

Think Big:

IDBI’s campaign encouraging people to think big with the help of bank services is another clear repositioning exercise, we have to wait and see whether this is just a campaign or actually backed by a massive corporate restructuring.

What are the challenges faced by such old-age banks?

• Employee mind set: most of the employees find it tough to change their behaviour towards customer. They might feel doing ‘great favors’ whenever a customer gets more than normal services. Fighting this syndrome means,
• Clear communication to them about new position of the bank
• Incentives/punishments designed to motivate them
• Monitoring service levels and ensuring that they go extra mile every day
• Customer mind set: Some of the existing customers actually stuck to bank because of its no-nonsense service levels, they never get tortured by phone calls or get introduced to unwanted loans/products. Changing their mindset without distancing from them is a tough balancing act.

Sometimes the anomalies and opportunities presented by online advertising leave me surprised. One thing that I always question is why cant the online advertising make sense? Companies spend huge chunks of money placing their ads right behind customers mouse pointer. And the result? The online advertising becomes much more confusing than offline alternatives. If ad-clutter in TV/newsprint is a pain then its equally painful online. For that matter the online clutter sometimes might be detrimental to your business (if your ad is one of them).

Evidence?

(1)

The cover story on today’s BusinessWeek is about IBM and how its Small Business strategy is helping them in making profits and stock market comeback. And what do I see when I click on the story. Colorful ads of SAP selling their solutions to interested parties. Whether IBM gains mileage out of the story or not anyone’s guess. Well, its not really difficult to generate a list of popular feeds referring to IBM from time to time. Then all the company marketing/ad team has to do is to ensure that you are talking to people interested in you at that precise hyper(con)text.

(2)

While reading some of the stories in Brand equity in ET I came across a page where Air Deccan and Kingfisher airlines are placed almost adjacent to each other. Now, this is nothing but wastage of money of both the parties and only beneficial to ET (not even customers). Again, rarely we see such advertising (2 competitors sponsoring same serial etc.) on normal media. Its really not difficult to eliminate one of the ads and thus increase the efficiency of both.

(3)

No comment on this one.

Converting new age advertising into an opportunity?
This is one of the topics that I have suggested for our marketing paper contest in IRIS 2005. The challenge is huge and much more complicate than the fight for column centimeters and TRPs. More on this later…