Radhika Gupta, CEO, Edelweiss AMC, talks about why the company is using the potential of sports to stand out in a competitive market Kabaddi as a sport has witnessed a resurgence of sorts in recent years as people today are appreciating sports outside of cricket. The moment is ripe for brands to leverage the sport’s growing popularity, as seen in Edelweiss AMC’s latest ‘Market conditions Dekh Kar Badhao bhi, Bachao bhi’ campaign for its Balanced Advantage Fund. Radhika Gupta, CEO, Edelweiss AMC, elucidates upon why the company is using the potential of sports to stand out in a competitive market. Tell us how your latest campaign was conceptualised, and what made you choose kabaddi? One of the things that we have always tried to do is take mutual funds communication that our investors and consumers understand which is at the heart of the campaign. We take a product category which is very important to us but also a little complicated, and simplify it with a real life analogy, because we like the power of storytelling. And kabaddi was the right analogy because it is a very Indian sport and at Edelweiss we like sports, and non-traditional sports beyond cricket. It has also caught up post the Kabaddi League where the players were aggressive when required, and defensive whenever needed, so we thought it went well with the BAF fund and appeal to India in general is very good.

Edelweiss, our parent brand, has been very pro-sports. Our tie-ups and our sponsoring of so many athletes in non-traditional sports has been happening for years. Sports is a unifier. I think across the length and breadth of India, across socio-economic groups and genders, sports is a tremendous unifier. It truly has a mass connect. What was your brief to the ad agency for this campaign? The brief was to talk about the Balanced Advantage Fund category as a category that can help you make money in the good times but also be protective during the bad times. Something that would be aggressive in good times and defensive when you need it to be. We wanted to explain the concept in a very simple way to consumers because Balanced Advantage Fund is a category that people do not understand. So, how do you demystify and simplify the concept? What is the marketing mix going to be like for the campaign? Considering the trend of Digital overtaking traditional mediums, is it the same for Edelweiss AMC where Digital is going to be the focus from now on? It is a 360-degree campaign, with around 12 business and general news channels across India. It is visible in outdoor locations in about 12-15 cities and is also across all digital platforms. Digital is definitely going to be important. This year has been special in the sense that there has been limited scope for the use of Print and OOH, because people are not out much. We also want to position ourselves more and more as a digital AMC in the mutual funds business. Because of the lockdown, a significantly higher percentage of transactions are digital, and we are probably clocking 70% digital transactions a month. Digital has been an important part of the strategy, and of course it will reflect in the marketing but this time we’ve also done a mix of traditional which is mainly TV and Outdoor, along with a good bit of Digital. Has the festive season impacted your marketing spends? I don’t think there is a significant change in our spends. In fact, outside of Bharat Bond this is our second largest campaign in terms of spends. It comes at a good time actually because the festive season is there. We try to leverage some of the festive season but the campaign size remains significant. In addition, we as a brand we want to be present in the market more consistently. I believe that building a brand is not a one-time effort and we have to do it consistently. Has COVID-19 led to a shift in your growth strategy? And which elements do you think will drive your growth post pandemic? COVID-19 has accelerated the focus on Digital as a strategy for growth. Our platform is entirely digital and I would love to continue that trend going forward. We will continue to expand our digital properties, and we’ve taken our events platform digital during these COVID times, and that’s something I would like to continue even after the lockdown. So, I would say that the pandemic is only accelerating our desire to be a more digitally-driven business. What are the emergent trends in the mutual funds industry? The mutual funds industry continues to be an exciting place. Consumers continue to look at all kinds of mutual fund offerings and interesting new product categories have been launched. Newer ideas are being embraced but I think it’s not just about more ideas, but rather that we are an industry with relatively lower levels of penetration. So, I think the exciting thing is to see more people embrace mutual funds as a core part of their product category like the one we are promoting which is the balanced advantage fund. That kind of product will find a lot of trust in consumers.