On February 1, 2025 as the Union Budget 2025-26 was presented by Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman, viewers watching business news channels saw the financial services company, Motilal Oswal Financial Services (MOFSL) unveil its refreshed brand identity. For the 37-year-old financial services company, the refresh was in-tune with the evolution happening all round, particularly with the demographics as well as psychographics, and was accompanied with the campaign #icon.
Commenting on the refreshed brand identity, Sandeep Walunj, Group Chief Marketing Officer, Motilal Oswal Financial Services says, “The current investors are looking at brands with a different lens. Apart from the knowledge, wisdom, quality of advisors, trust and legacy, they are also looking for relatability, approachability and modernity. That was one driving factor.
The second driving factor is the observation that new and young investors, coming in from across the country, want a brand that can teach them how to invest. We realized that the narrative is changing especially on the broking side. For us to be relevant to this new audience that coming in, we had to evolve in line with the new reality.”
The brand refresh also encompasses a new logo with the intent to reimagine the “iconic identity in the context of today’s reality.” The first change was the removal of the box from the MOFSL’s old logo. At the center of the change is a circle called the ‘Arc of Essence,’ which represents the brand’s volition to research and identify value from the equity market and is also the bridge to the past. The Oxford blue colour (replacing the earlier orange/yellow) of the logo conveys professionalism, legacy, consistency, and expertise, while the modern and in small letter typeface (in place of the earlier capital letters) refreshes its relevance and approachability to the modern and dynamic world. The new identity signifies progress while staying rooted in MOFSL’s core philosophy: “Solid Research. Solid Advice.”
The consumer campaign has three legs with the first being the new logo being flashed on budget day across all business TV channels and Digital business platforms such as moneycontrol.com.
This was followed by Print ads the next day. The second leg is on social media and collaborating with influencers to drive user engagement. MOFSL is also leveraging its physical touch-points, such as 5,000 distribution points and employees to carry the message forward as well as releasing a couple of films that shares insight on the brand’s philosophy.
The last part of the consumer campaign sees the release of a new campaign at the end of February with the messaging to consumers that if they are serious about investing, they should come to MOFSL.
Combatting Scams
In 2024, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reported bank frauds that exceeded Rs 139.3 billion. This highlights the importance of investor education and vigilance. On its part, MOFSL has removed over 15,000 fake posts, videos and apps to combat fraudulent activities. MOFSL also released the #YehConHai campaign focusing on educating investors to recognise and avoid scams.
The quirky and hilarious campaign films featured Raamdeo Agrawal, Chairman & Co-founder, MOFSL taking on a scamster while landing the message effectively. He identifies the key red flags that investors should be wary of when approached by potential fraudsters, such as pressure to act quickly or make rushed decisions, promises of guaranteed returns, assurances of instant or extraordinarily fast profits and any requests to transfer money to a separate, non-official account. As part of the campaign, MOFSL introduced channels for investors to verify claims and individuals' authenticity.
Speaking on the campaign Walunj says, “Mr Raamdeo Agrawal is well respected in the industry and he made a rare appearance in a television commercial. The film shows a sting operation with a scammer and Raamdeo Agrawal comes in to say, ‘he is lying,’. As a trusted legacy brand MOFSL is actually also the favorite brand of scammers who use our brand to scam people. We needed to underline the fact that you have to be very careful and also highlight that our experts get impersonated very often. This was a creative experiment which worked extremely well. We wanted to do this in an engaging and humorous way so that communication brings a smile on your face.”
Talking about its media mix he says that MOFSL’s has a good media mix in terms of which channel works best for them. He adds, “We have a balance between traditional and digital as brand equity gets built in the traditional way. Traditional media is used judiciously to target the in-market audience effectively. Digital is used for ease of transaction and reminder with Meta and Google being our primary channels. Television (business channels) works extremely well because of the category we are in.” MOFSL also has a partnership with CNBC-TV18 wherein one of the studios is branded CNBC-Motilal Oswal studio as their target audience watches business news frequently.
Another important channel is collaborating with select influencers very judiciously with the content focused on information dissemination and not on anything related to investing or stock recommendations. Walunj says that MOFSL “steers far away from finfluencers.”
Expanding the Base
The risk factor associated with stock market investments has typically meant that investments in bourse have been restricted to metros, such as Mumbai or State like Gujarat and Rajasthan in India. However, a big change has been the significant decrease in risk perception in market investments in recent times.
On the other hand, the risk appetite has increased and rising aspirations has seen people move their money from traditional investments in the pursuit of higher returns. Another key factor, the rise in fintech platforms has made investing very accessible. Walunj explains. “The increased accessibility and aspirations as well as an increased risk appetite has resulted in people entering the market. Apart from the traditional bastions of Mumbai, Delhi, Gujarat than Rajasthan, people are coming into the markets from the Hindi Belt, the Northeast and across the strata from other parts of the country.
In addition, we ate seeing youngsters, the middle aged and even retirees are looking at the markets because the traditional investments are not as lucrative as they were.” He continues, “In terms of growth we are seeing 25% to 30% year-on-year growth in number of investors from the Hindi heartland. The growth rate in the traditional areas of Mumbai, Delhi etc. is in the range of 12% to 15%, but that's on a large base.”
With the new identity in place, looking ahead MOFSL is looking at spending more on marketing particularly on the brand building side as well as on the performance marketing side.
Walunj says, “There are a lot of investors wanting to invest and there is a dearth of players like us who represent professionalism and have the required research. Most of the fintech platforms do not have the research or the right advice and the consumer is left on their own. We want to fill that vacuum, which is why we will be talking more often on all the relevant channels and you will see us being more visible next year. We need to be more approachable so that more people come in, and take our knowledge and advice and invest successfully.
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