Until a decade ago, people looked at gold loans as a last resort among borrowing options. Muthoot Finance’s marketing communications have had the sole focus to address that challenge. Abhinav Iyer, Senior General Manager of Marketing & Strategy for Muthoot Finance and The Muthoot Group, tells us about how they went about bringing an attitudinal transformation amongst people and first-time loan seekers.
Edited excerpts…
What have been key disruptors in the lending space?
The lending space in India is witnessing a transformation, coupled with constantly evolving customer expectations and rising technological innovations. AI, ML, big data and data analytics are key disruptors, reshaping customer experiences. Customers today demand and rightfully so, seamless journeys, straight through processing and online fulfillment in a few touches.
How have you seen consumer perception towards gold loans evolve?
In India, gold loans have been traditionally perceived as a measure of last resort. Until a decade ago, people used to think of gold loans only when they ran out of all borrowing options. To address this challenge we have tailormade all our marketing communications to break barriers, overcome mental blocks and bring about an attitudinal transformation amongst people and first-time loan seekers. Our communications have encouraged people to think of gold loans as their preferred loan option by unlocking an idle-lying asset, locked away in almirahs and cabinets.
Campaigns like “Gold Loan is Good” and “Kholiye Khushiyon Ki Tijori” have particularly helped us achieve this objective convincingly. Customers have increasingly started understanding the potential of household gold jewellery. They are now making their gold work hard and helping them realise their dreams, fuel their ambitions and move ahead in life.
Today, the potential for Gold Loans is immense. There are more than 250,000 tons of household gold jewellery in India with less than 5% of it monetised by way of Gold Loans. With over 7,000 branches across the country, we serve over 2.5 lakh customers every day. What better testament to the changing consumer perception and growing demand for gold loans?
How is Muthoot Finance adapting to new technology to maintain leadership?
Being a category leader in the gold loan space, we at Muthoot Finance have constantly reinvented ourselves from time to time. We are one of the first ones to launch ‘Gold Loan at Home’, a doorstep service for customers interested in availing gold loans from the comfort of their living rooms.
Our iMuthoot Mobile App has customer-friendly UPI integrations for repayments. Our Gold Milligram Reward Program is the Gold Loan Industry’s first loyalty program where customers can earn an assured 24-carat gold coin on every transaction. We offer various other customer benefits such as free pre-payment and part-payment facilities, free part-release of your gold, seven-layer safety and security of customers’ gold in insured lockers and more. Great interest rates, quick turnaround time, instant disbursement and the assurance of dealing with one of India’s most trusted brands are some of our offerings as a category leader.
What are some key consumer insights that have shaped the brand’s marketing and business strategies?
Consumers continuously need funds for their individual, family or professional needs. It could be to start a new business or expand their existing one. To renovate or upgrade their existing home or buy a new one altogether. To travel abroad, pursue a hobby or fuel their children’s dreams. The reasons are many and the need is often instant. To address such a growing need, we have created multiple marketing campaigns that have been educative, dispelled inhibitions, created awareness, instilled belief, inspired hope through storytelling or simply showcased product propositions that matter. These campaigns finally culminated in encouraging people to shun their hesitations and reluctance and avail of a gold loan with pride.
Tell us about the insight behind and impact of the most recent ‘Sunheri Soch’ campaign.
Our latest and biggest campaign of the year is Sunheri Soch Season 3. It is an integrated marketing campaign across TV, print, radio, digital, out-of-home, BTL and activations. This year, the campaign brings together 17 highly inspiring, real-life stories of Muthoot Finance customers who fulfilled their dreams and made it big in life by taking a gold loan with pride and conviction. Hence the campaign theme is “Garv Ka Parv”.
The campaign is narrated by Madhuri Dixit with complements in regional languages by four powerful influencers—Manoj Joshi, Jisshu Sengupta, Sudesh Bhosale and RJ Raunac. Furthermore, over 100 top RJs of the country also come together to promote these inspiring customer testimonials and the Sunheri Soch anthem on their social media channels. A Sunheri Soch TV ad has also been created with Shri Amitabh Bachchanji which went live on the launch day.
Most essentially, stories for the campaign have been handpicked from over 2,200 real-life customer testimonials received in Season 2 to represent a wide cross-section of our customers across gender, geography, loan purposes and socio-economic backgrounds.
From a business impact perspective, in Season 2, we canvassed 4.5 times more gold loans than in Season 1. Our aspiration for Season 3 is to double what we achieved in Season 2. Additionally, we are also aiming to collect 5,000 success stories this time, which would give us the next set of life-changing customer stories for Season 4.
