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At the fifth edition of the India Brand Conclave 2021 held on 15thDecember, Karthi Marshan, President & Chief Marketing Officer at Kotak Mahindra Group addressed a speaker session on the topic, How an Agile and an Adaptable Mindset aided Kotak Mahindra to remain on top of consumers minds.

Marshan started the session with presenting a few examples of Kotak showing its agility and adaptability.

Marshan talked about the launch of the first indigenously designed car of the country and how Uday Kotak, CEO & Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, with his colleagues at that time, saw an opportunity in it.

Marshan said, Soon after the car was launched, within a couple of years, Kotak was present in the car finance space. In the early 90s, if you wanted a car, there was a premium you had to pay, just to book it because demand far outstripped supply.

He mentioned how Kotak came up with the idea that people want cars and not loans. Marshan said, We had to sell our loans. So we booked thousands of cars and told people that if they took loans from us, they could get their cars immediately. I think, this was quite a kickass adaptability idea for its time.

Let me share a story from the commercial vehicles space now. During the rainy season, truck fleets found it challenging to run their businesses because they werent the kind of container trucks that we see today. So business would be lean in those three months and EMIs would be difficult to pay as there was no cash flow coming in. So Kotak at that time, innovated arguably Indias first Moratorium product where EMI payments would be nine-month payments. So the truck fleet owners who were borrowing money to buy those trucks from us would get a three-month holiday on paying for those trucks, Marshan added.

Kotak has always been agile in terms of responding to reforms. Marshan said, On 25thOctober, 2011, RBI deregulated the interest rate that we were allowed to pay on saving accounts. With deregulation, it meant we could decide what interest we want to pay. It could have been 0% or X%. In our case, we chose to pay 6% and we did this literally within a week of that regulation changing.

Marshan then explained how Kotak used moment marketing in run-up to the banks ambassador Ranveer Singhs wedding. Kotak launched debit cards with an imprint of Ranveers face. While Ranveer was handing out invitation cards to his wedding, Kotak launched outdoor and social media posts with Ranveers picture asking, Card Mila Kya? Marshan explained, We didnt even put our logo on it. We got a lot of chuckles and a fair amount of appreciation for the campaign. It reinforced our image as an agile brand.

This October, when a bunch of social media platforms went down briefly, Kotak Mahindra Bank again saw in that an opportunity to express a sense of camaraderie in a lighter tone and leverage it for their own story to make noise about their home loans, available at one of the lowest rate in the market. Kotak tweeted asking people what was common between those social media platforms and Kotaks home loan rate, and the answer was obviously that they were all down.

We latched on to moment marketing, told this story on Twitter in the middle of the night and it did fairly well, Marshan said.

However, sometimes moment marketing can look like ambulance chasing and just riding on every single moment may not be a good idea. I think, it is incredibly important to make sure that you know what your brands boundaries are, you must know your brands relevance, what your brands context is and when the moment happens, to see if you fit that context in a seamless, gracious and elegant way and whether it takes the brands message forward. Marshan cautioned.

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It is incredibly important to know what your brand boundaries are: Karthi Marshan - Exchange4Media