In an exclusive interview with e4m, Iyer, General Manager-Marketing & Strategy, The Muthoot Group, shared key insights that led to the season 2 campaign featuring Madhuri Dixit After the first successful season of Muthoot Finance Sunheri Soch, featuring mega Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan, the company is back with season 2 of the campaign, and this time the face of the campaign is popular actress Madhuri Dixit. In an exclusive interview with e4m, Abhinav Iyer, General Manager (Marketing & Strategy), The Muthoot Group, spoke about season 2 of this campaign, key insights that led to this campaign and more. Excerpts:
What was the strategy behind this Campaign? What are the main value propositions being conveyed through this season?
We at Muthoot Finance serve over 2.5 Lac customers every day and till date we have served over 72 Crore customers, including repeat customers. When you have touched the lives of such a large number of people over the years and helped them in their journey of life, you can certainly be sure of one thing – an overflow of inspiring stories. Last year, as part of Sunheri Soch Season-1 we received thousands of success stories of our customers. When we went through these touching and soul-stirring stories, we were totally convinced to roll out Muthoot Finance Sunheri Soch Season-2.
As far as value propositions are concerned, Muthoot Finance Gold Loans offer abundant features and customer benefits. From minimal documentation and instant loan disbursal to lowest interest rates; from widespread branch network of 5000+ branches to state-of-the-art security infrastructure at branches; from free insurance of your pledged gold to extremely friendly staff; and from the luxury to avail Gold Loan from your Home to the convenience to repay your interest online through WhatsApp Business, Muthoot ChatBot, Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay and much more. All these value propositions are being well covered in these five inspiring real-life stories this Season.
How is Sunheri Soch Season-2 different from Sunheri Soch Season-1? And how are they interconnected?
Sunheri Soch Season-2 presents success stories of common people who have walked the path of Aatmanirbharta. People who have transitioned from Self-Confidence to Self-Reliance and become successful. These are people who come from humble family backgrounds but never let anything restrain their aspirations. They dreamt big and made their dreams come true. Ordinary people who believed in their dreams dared to take the first step and also received timely financial help from us. These are people who aspired to set up their own business or give back to society; who defied their modest means and even overcame age barriers but rose above and beyond all hurdles to achieve success.
Another exciting differentiation this Season is having a new storyteller. These stories aimed at igniting inspiration for a million other Indians to become self-reliant and move ahead in life, are being narrated by Madhuri Dixit, who’ll be donning a new avatar when doing so, only on Superhits Red FM 93.5. Last Season, we had Shri Amitabh Bachchan and this year we are extremely delighted to partner with and present Mrs. Madhuri Dixit for Season-2.
The commonality between the two Seasons is the exact same passion that their real-life heroes share amongst them. In fact, both Seasons are interconnected by a unique commonality – they present stories of common people who did not allow their challenges to outweigh their courage.
How is the campaign release planned?
As part of Muthoot Finance Sunheri Soch Season-2, for 5 successive weeks, a new & inspiring success story will be aired every Monday starting 28th February 2022 at 9 a.m.only on Superhits REDFM 93.5. These stories will also be repeated every day from Tuesday to Saturday. Alongside, aspecially curated digital video for each story will also be launched every Monday which will be showcased on the Official FaceBook and YouTube channels of The Muthoot Group & RedFM. These digital videos will also be available on www.sunherisoch.com– a dedicated landing page created to host all campaign assets.
A special song-music-dance video titled Sunheri Soch Season-2 Anthem is also being launched on 25th February – a few days prior to the first story going on air. The heart-warming Anthem features RedFM’s top RJ’s saluting the courage of these inspiring people who succeeded in the most challenging times. 100+ RJs from RedFM will also be promoting the campaign on their social media assets.
A lucky draw contest is also part of this campaign wherein new Muthoot Finance customers could share their inspiring success stories and 30 of them could get a chance to win a 24Carat Gold Coin. Alternately, their story could be handpicked to be narrated next Season.
The audio stories and the gripping Sunheri Soch anthem will also be streaming on music channels like Jio Saavn, Spotify, Gaana, Apple Podcasts and RedFM India App to name a few. The Campaign will be promoted extensively on TV, Print, Radio, Digital, OTT, Outdoor and Activation.
What were the consumer insights that led to this campaign?
Primarily, there were two key well-known insights that led us to curate Muthoot Finance Sunheri Soch. The first is that people most commonly feel inspired by success. As the well-known saying goes “Nothing Succeeds like Success”. And secondly, the well-known adage that “Storytelling is the oldest form of teaching”. These two strong ideas laid the foundation for us to conceive and launch Sunheri Soch yet again.
Given the uncertainty led by the pandemic – the campaign highlights success stories of customers of Muthoot Finance -- do you see the campaign rekindling/reinforcing and motivating customers to avail gold loan finance?
Most certainly. Gold Loan as a category has fared extremely well even during the pandemic years. Being the category leader, we at Muthoot Finance have witnessed our consolidated loan book grow by a notable30% since Mar’2020.
In fact, after Sunheri Soch Season-1 last year, we experienced a similar surge in bringing about an attitudinal transformation in the way people perceived gold loans. We helped change the perception about Gold Loans from being a distress loan to a lifestyle loan and from being the ‘last choice’ to being a ‘smart choice’.We were able to inspire thousands of new customers to avail and benefit from our easy, hassle-free and quick gold loan offerings. And coupled with lowest interest rates and great digital benefits like online interest repayments, online loan top-up facilities and Gold Loan@Home conveniences; we managed to do quite well even in the recent challenging times.
We have always believed that ‘Trust’ is the most important element, especially in this business, because in our country, household gold jewellery is treated more as an emotional asset than mere collateral. We feel our Company’s century-old presence, widespread branch network and unblemished track record have greatly helped us in building a strong foundation of trust with our customers. We are certain that Sunheri Soch Season-2 will surpass our business expectations and also contribute in growing the gold category in a sizable way.
How long is the campaign, what are the USPs that are being highlighted?
Overall, Muthoot Finance Sunheri Soch Season-2 is a 6-week long campaign with one week of pre-launch wherein we flag-off our Sunheri Soch Anthem followed by 5 weeks of the campaign with one new story being launched every Monday of the week.
In terms of the marketing mix, which platforms will you spend on most?
Sunheri Soch is primarily a Radio & Digital Campaign hence 70% of our campaign’s investments have been ploughed into these two mediums. The remaining 30% is being invested across Print, Outdoor, Activations and other electronic mediums.
