Does the Charging Bull have reason to fear the Fearless Girl?

The ‘Fearless Girl’ statue (in front of the Wall Street Charging Bull ) promoting  gender diversity is probably one of the most impactful ideas this year. A symbol of feminist strength and leadership; Fearless Girl was commissioned by investment firm State Street Global Advisors(SSGA) as an advertisement to promote the first year of its Gender Diverse Index ETF Fund which comprises gender-diverse companies that have a higher percentage of women among their senior leadership. The plaque below the statue states, "Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference," with "SHE" being both a descriptive pronoun and the fund's NASDAQ ticker symbol. The idea of a Fearless Girl standing up to a much larger statue of the famous Wall Street Bull meant to send a message about workplace gender diversity and encourage companies to recruit more women to their boards.

While the idea hits home hard and has created worldwide awareness for the cause and the product being advertised, what it also does at some level is to paint the charging bull as an obstacle . Both State Street and the artist who created the sculpture say  that the installation is non-confrontational. Infact State Street claims it has been placed there to be a partner to the bull, to represent the power of women.

But will visitors decode it that way?

When commissioned, the idea of the charging bull itself was to project optimism and strength amid adversity. After all the phrase ‘bullish’ is an adjective for hope and buoyancy. The time preceding the sculpture’s creation in the late 80’s was turbulent for the stock markets and included the ‘Black Monday’ crash of 1987. It was planted under cover of night, guerrilla-style, in front of the stock exchange and ever since has stood as a symbol of energy and resilience.

However; with the financial crisis of 2008, the image of Wall Street has taken a bit of a beating.  While for many the bull continues to be a positive symbol ; as a tangible representation of the stock markets, it has also had to bear the brunt of confrontationist inequality movements like Occupy Wall Street (see poster) .

By being placed right in front of it, has the Fearless Girl in effect repositioned the Charging Bull as an adversary to be overcome rather than as a symbol of optimism?

I hope not.

Disclaimer : Views are personal and an observation on communication decoding. They are not meant to question either the impact of the ‘Fearless Girl’ campaign or the cause of Gender Diversity

Published in Economic Times- BRAND EQUITY on 2nd August 2017

Motilal Oswal 'TIP': A fresh perspective to Goal Based Investing

Every advisor or distributor espouse the concept of Goal Based Investing. That's because Goal Based Investing (GBI) not only encourages investing discipline, it also makes customer invest for the long term to achieve a goal.
Mutual Funds are one of the best ways to achieve long term goals. That's because mutual funds ; and especially good equity mutual funds, provide benchmark beating returns.
Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd is a respected equity broker who has recently entered into distribution of mutual funds. We had hence created a standard GBI platform.
However, a lot of communication lime that below already existed on GBI

To be relevant we needed a fresh perspective
Paradigm Shift 1 : The target audience
We are competing not just with IFAs and wealth distributors; but also with the distribution arms of large and small banks. These brands have a large cache of trust among investors; but they also were generalists ie selling all products to every kind of customer. Given our focused approach to Marketing, we decided to be focused in our Marketing Target Audience as well. While other distributors sold to all kinds of investors; big and small, first timers and seasoned; we decided to only focus on people who were already investing in mutual funds, especially equity mutual funds. That's because being an equity investing expert with over 30 years of equity experience, we could do  a better job of creating effective investing advice to those investing in equity. Whats more there would be more brand familiarity for us among these investors, given our equity heritage.
Paradigm Shift 2: The product
At Motilal Oswal, we believe in having a process for investing. It is this process that helps differentiate us from other investing brands. We have tried to use a process in our approach to goal based investing as well. Rather than just claim we will help achieve an investing goal, we have broken it up into three components

1.       How Much to Invest(Amount)

2.       How Long to Invest(Time)

3.       What to Invest in (Fund Mix recommendation)

In each of these components we have created a differentiator

1.       Dynamic Investment Calculator: Our Dynamic Investment Calculator looks at your earnings and savings along with your risk profile and overall investing goal to tell you how much you need to invest to achieve your goals

2.       Compounding Calculator : Our Target Investment Plan has a Compounding Calculator that tells you how long you need to invest ( in addition to investment and fund recommendation) to help you achieve your goals

3.       Focused Investing Recommendations: In our Target Investing Plan recommendation, we use our acclaimed research to make a focused recommendation on  1)number of funds & 2)fund selection This focused investing approach is based on a clear portfolio goal, superior fund selection, rational allocation of investments across funds and active monitoring to give your portfolio the edge for asymmetric payoffs

The complete MO GBI product is configured on this process

Paradigm Shift 3 : The Communication

To short hand the GBI Process we chanced upon an investing insight that is relevant to our brand. Motilal Oswal as a brand has historically been acknowledged as a trustworthy broker. What you typically expect from a broker are solid TIPs. We have hence used this expectation in the context of GBI to reframe it as a Target Investment Plan 

The whole campaign aims to create buzz around the concept of #TheonlyTIP you need for investing

The communication proposition is based on the premise that very day we receive TIPs from various people. Most of these tips are useless (after all free fund mein advise toh sab dete hain!). Atleast there is one TIP (Target Investment Plan) that is useful because it helps realise goals

Here are some of the teasers 

We then moved onto teasers using our brand ambassador - The Man From Motilal Oswal

In the launch we used an internet celebrity (Malika Dua) to highlight the useless tips people receive and present the benefits of Motilal Oswal TIP through the Brand Ambassador

Follow Up Communication focussed on individual features and how they contributed to the process of Goal Based Investing

The campaign has also been taken forward in Ambient Media

SOME INITIAL RESULTS

Ranked the TOP trending tweet by Campaign India 

 http://www.campaignindia.in/article/unmetric-engagement-meter-twitter-top-20-21-31-july/438766

Primary Hashtags “#TheOnlyTIP” on 24th July 2017 was one of the most talked about topic on twitter.

Hashtag trended on twitter nationally, In Mumbai & Chennai for more than 2 hours.Total number of users engaged during all activities were 1030+. Total number of Mentions: 7812+. 
Total number of impression generated: 78.2 Million

ANNUAL SIP - A NEW WAY TO ENCOURAGE LONG TERM INVESTING

Systematic Investment Plan or SIP is an effective way to create wealth over the long term. While traditional SIPs talk about the benefits of regularly putting in small amounts, we have created a product based on a different insight.
We all have special anniversaries in our lives which are special. It could be our own birthday or the birthday of our child, our wedding anniversary or even a milestone. Typically we celebrate these special days every year - by spending money. The annual SIP aims to get investors to use their special yearly events to invest money.
Money that will help us enjoy life over the long term.
We have hence created a special annual SIP product based on this insight.
Here's the communication

Role of Intermediary in Investing

Given the latest regulator rulings on intermediary compensation, many people are envisaging the move to direct investing or an advisory fee based model.
While these models will continue to evolve, there would continue to be a role for intermediaries in investing for two reasons

• Unlike buying products online where you can compare one tangible versus another, investing requires an estimation of what the future of the product would be like. This requires expertise.
• Given sub 5% penetration levels of equity and mutual funds in India, there is a large role of education and expertise needed by investors; especially new to investing/novice investors and those who do not have much time or bandwidth to look after their investments

Investors today exist in different psyches:

1.   Delegator- one who wants to delegate all his investing decisions to an expert. Typically a mutual fund, PMS investor
2.  Validator- one who will take his own decisions but needs advice from an expert to validate. Typically a long term stock market/mutual fund investor
3.  Self Directed - one who does his own research, takes his own decisions and trades; typically in short term stock market trades

 There is a role that an intermediary would play ;atleast for the first two audiences:

1.  Choice – An intermediary helps you choose from a plethora of investing options ( there are thousands of stocks and mutual funds to choose from) based on your profile and investing goal
2.   Conviction- He has the knowledge and experience . hence when he suggests an investing idea, he can do so with conviction. This conviction is what many times helps you take the decision.
3.  Counselling- during times of market volatility, a financial advisor can counsel you to be disciplined about investing (and not give into the emotions of greed and fear)
4. Consolidation- all your various investments ( various mutual funds, stocks, insurance etc) can be consolidated and tracked in one place by the intermediary who can provide you timely alerts for course correction etc
5. 
   

Here's a 5 minute  video we have made on role of intermediary in investing

Think Equity. Think Motilal Oswal.

 Equity markets have delivered steller returns in the past 6 months. If you see the inflows into equity mutual funds, direct equity investing  as well as IPOs, there is currently a lot of interest among investors for equity as an asset class. However given low penetration, there is low understanding around equity investing.

Today, Mass Affluent investors are looking for avenues to create wealth. While they may have invested in various asset classes ( fixed deposits, gold, real estate, fixed income funds), they realise that equity is probably the best asset class to create wealth over the long term.  They want to take advantage of the current favourable investing climate and invest in equity- either through equity mutual funds or through direct stock investing. However, they also realise that equity investing requires special expertise. It is complex, requires regular monitoring , knowledge to pick winners and the discipline to stick with them. Lack of these qualities is what makes equity investing risky. To take advantage of the investing opportunity and mitigate its risks, they are looking at equity investing experts

In a category with low penetration, it is awareness and consideration that builds brand trial. To create consideration , Motilal Oswal has created a campaign positioning itself as the equity investing expert. 

Drive by Motilal Oswal tower at night and it will be lit green or red depending on how the stock markets have performed that day. Instead of  ‘Up-Down’ buttons our elevators have visuals of Bulls and Bears.  We have one of the largest equity research departments in the industry and a unique equity investing process(QGLP) . All the money of the company and promoters is invested only in equity . As an investment house we think, breathe and live  equity . Needless to say; we are an ‘equity focused’ investing house !

To celebrate this  focus on equity , we have rolled out our latest brand campaign positioning  MOFSL as an equity investing expert.

The campaign idea is simple – if you are thinking about investing in equity , think about Motilal Oswal. Because we have been focusing on only equity for 30 years and have mastered it .

The idea of  the campaign is to; well; focus on this focus! And hence present Motilal Oswal as the equity expert you should think of if you are thinking about investing in equity.

Here is the launch TV film & Print. Media is Business and General news channels and Business Newspapers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u77JSR1sCFo

UPDATE ( 20th November 2017) : Buoyed by the success of the launch TVC, we have released a follow up TVC which is on air since November 20th 2017. Here is a link to the same.

https://youtu.be/FDNMJsXdmts

Campaign also taken forward in various digital media and collaterals

Social Media Contextual Posts

Digital Banners 

Ambient Media & Collaterals

We have also taken forward our equity expertise proposition and the 'Think Motilal Oswal' Idea in the form of an onground activation in association with IIM Ahmedabad. The activation idea promotes our QGLP investing approach through India's first stock-picking contest for B-Schools.

MOTILAL OSWAL AMC 'THINK EQUITY. THINK Q.G.L.P' CONTEST

CONTEST INTRODUCTION

CONTEST PROMOTION

CONTEST CURTAIN RAISER ON CNBCTV18

Here is some of the coverage the campaign has already received in its first week 
Business Standard

Financial Express

Impact Magazine

Online Coverage

• http://www.campaignindia.in/video/motilal-oswal-pitches-itself-as-the-equity-expert/437707
• http://www.indiantelevision.com/mam/media-and-advertising/ad-campaigns/lintass-motilal-oswal-campaign-shows-whos-an-expert-170628
• https://www.adgully.com/mullen-lintas-mumbai-gets-experts-to-show-the-real-expert-in-investing-72985.html
• https://tvnews4u.com/mullen-lintas-mumbai-gets-experts-to-show-whos-the-real-expert-in-investing-in-latest-brand-campaign/
• https://twitter.com/moneycontrolcom/status/879632824881434624
• http://bestmediainfo.com/2017/06/ad-stand-festival-at-cannes/
• https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/advertising/motilal-oswals-new-experts-in-equity-ad-campaign-is-a-visual-treat/61726309
• http://www.campaignindia.in/video/the-experts-return-in-motilal-oswals-sequel/441166
• http://www.campaignindia.in/article/pick-of-the-week-motilal-oswal/441249

• Online Views

The advertising has achieved almost 4 million views on youtube , over 2 lac views on facebook and over 2 lac views on twitter as well. This does not include the viral views generated through sharing of video on individuals social media pages. Infact according to a youtube report, the ad is one of the best performing in BFSI space with a cost per view of 1/3rd the category average cost

Best BFSI campaign at the INDIAAA Awards 2017 ( http://indiaa-awards.org/ )

The Indian chapter of the International Advertising Association comes out with the IndIAA(India Chapter of the International Advertising Association) awards that recognise real advertising campaigns that have worked hard in the market place. An esteemed jury consisting of Gopal Vittal (Bharti Airtel), Shikha Sharma (Axis Bank), Suresh Narayanan (Nestle), Nitish Kapoor (Reckitt Benckiser), Sunil Duggal (Dabur) and Sunil Kataria (Godrej) selected the ''Think Equity. Think Motilal Oswal' campaign as the best in the BFSI category for 2017

CNBCTV18-India Business Leaders Award : Brand of the Year

Some Awards Won by the Campaign