In 2021, NSDL e-Governance Infrastructure rebranded itself as Protean eGov Technologies, aligning with the company's transformation in its offerings to the businesses and citizens of India.
Protean eGov Technologies focuses on developing Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and e-governance initiators for various government bodies, national and state in India across multiple sectors including Tax Services - Permanent Account Number (PAN), Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), Electronic Tax Deducted at source (e-TDS); Social Security and Welfare (Central Recordkeeping Agency (CRA) for the National Pension System (NPS) & Atal Pension Yojana (APY); ID and Data Stack, Open Digital Ecosystem, Cloud.
A New Avatar
The company has 19 different projects and products, however this was not seen by the user under one axis. Gaurav Ramdev, Chief Growth & Marketing Officer, Protean eGov Technologies says, “We had to shed our old imagery and bring in a new one which resonated with the vision and mission of the organisation in its new avatar. In Latin, Protean means multifaceted and we wanted to bring together an essence of a multifaceted organisation, in the category of digital public infrastructure (DPI) or e-governance.”
He continues, “Our mission is clear - social and financial inclusion of Bharat. Our idea for the organisation is to build population scale technology so that anybody in any part of India can easily use citizen services or e-governance products to fulfill citizen needs.” In 2023, Protean eGov Technologies unveiled its first ever 360° brand campaign titled 'Change is Growth’, to highlight the brand’s leadership position in digital public infrastructure and drive growth and social inclusion.
In January this year, Protean took its rebranding effort further and launched its latest brand campaign – Apni Kahaani ka Hero! - with the tagline – ‘Protean: Impacting Everyone, Every day’ - to showcase how DPI elevates lives of citizens. The film highlights how Indians overcome everyday obstacles to fulfil their dreams and how all Protean products can help you move forward at any life stage. Ramdev says, “Our problem statement is that the consumer only touches one facet or one project of Protean at one time. For eg. If you are a consumer of PAN, you only aware of that facet of Protean when dealing with the PAN card issuance or if you are a customer of NPS then as we are the CRA you see Protean from that perspective. There are 18 different other perspectives that that Protean has.” He continues, “DPI is a technical jargon which not many consumers understand. We wanted to humanise DPI for consumers at large, because knowingly or unknowingly, they use DPI in their daily lives. The brief was to simplify DPI for consumers and make them understand what role DPI plays in their life, by narrating a story from a consumer’s point of view to show how Protean is an enabler to the dreams and aspirations of the 1.45 billion people that it serves.”
The digital-first campaign is looking at a sharp and precise targeting a subset of 30 million people. Ramdev says, “We have shunned away our usual way of segmentation in media planning - geographical sets, demographic age-based segmentation etc, For the first time, we are looking at interest-based segmentation; anybody with an interest in Fintech, finance, BFSI or has an interest in government affairs.” The campaign is supported by print ads in business newspapers and a sharp outdoor plan across financial districts in India. We are looking for partnerships with the fintech and finance ecosystems to come together to serve the ultimate agenda of social and financial inclusion.” He continues, “The rest of the plan is around content building. We have a story to tell and we don't have an ad to show; that's the big difference. While we have a plan of delivering ad impressions, we want to create an ecosystem of storytelling around Protean. By delivering relevant content, we are looking at a high quality of impressions.” Protean is also using influencer activity to educate consumers with the choice of influencer depending on engaged storytelling, particularly when targeting younger audiences who have an interest in finance. The company is also using podcasts as a method of storytelling. This campaign will be on air for 12 to 14 weeks with new content being rolled out during this duration.
The Aam Aadmi Connect
When the campaign was being initiated, the goal was clear – To answer the two problem statements - What is Protean? What is DPI? This should be relayed through a story of Bharat and the people who overcame everyday challenges to follow their dreams and aspirations.
Ramdev says that while brainstorming with their creative agency Ogilvy, the team found that there was a unique story in the Hilm film fraternity which was similar to the narrative that Protean was looking at. This was the story of actor Pankaj Tripathi who hails from a small town of Belsund in Bihar. Tripathi embodied the story of someone who had big dreams and is now the epitome of success. Ramdev says, “Pankaj Tripathi was not only an obvious choice, he was the face of the story that we had written. Usually, brands take the route of writing a story and then add a celebrity for added firepower. We went the other way around. We found Tripathi’s story to be unique, inspirational and close to what we wanted to say.” We started off with no celebrity as we wanted to tell the story of an ordinary Joe. As a brand marketer, we did a value-to-value comparison of the values of Protean as a company and brand versus the values that he brings on board. We saw a great amount of harmony between the two. As we are a citizen services company, we need trust to build with our products. This was a match made in heaven, as Pankaj Tripathi represents the modern common man from a small town whose dreams and aspirations have come to life.
As Protean adopts a consumer-facing strategy, its marketing aspirations have grown. A change in the marketing approach is an investment on high-quality content which can be used for a longer duration and has less fatigue. Ramdev says, “From a marketing budget perspective, we have upped the marketing budget on a double-digit percentage. We are investing in long-term quality assets rather than just social media posts and social media content, which is short-lived.”
.jpg)
