Brand: PNB Housing Finance
Budget: Rs 20 crore
Agency: Mash Advertising
For Indians, owning a home continues to be the most tangible sign of having arrived in life. However, depending on one's aspiration, taste and, most importantly, the budget, acquiring a "dream home" remains a daunting task. A new campaign by PNB Housing Finance suggests help is round the corner. It urges consumers not to allow any lingering financial fears to stop them from buying homes.
The campaign proclaiming "Door to your dream home opens easier with us" captures vignettes of birds and animals putting together their own dream homes emphasising the fact that nature does not offer them any provision for rented accommodation. Drawing a parallel between the animal kingdom and the human world, the television spot goes on to establish that owning a home is every individual's birthright and it can be within reach with PNB Housing Finance's customised loan offerings.
The key objective of the campaign is to "improve brand perception about the quality of services and establish PNB Housing as a new age, customer-centric housing loan provider". "At PNB Housing customer service standard has been the key to rapid growth," says Shaji Varghese, chief marketing officer, PNB Housing Finance. The approach is a departure for a loan provider brand, which has historically focused on products and services in its advertising. The shift here is to talk more about the brand, what it offers and tell stories that people can relate to.
So what are these services that sets PNB Housing Finance apart from the others? These attributes are hassle-free customer service, easy online access, doorstep services and a host of other conveniences. The campaign also draws attention to the fact that the company is present across various technology-enabled platforms and is capable of offering world-class experience at every touch point.
Typically one is used to seeing family-based situations in the home loan category. What prompted PNB Housing Finance to use animation to deliver the brand message? "One of the major reasons to consider animation for the campaign was to break the clutter and create differentiation in the financial services category. We created visual hooks in the film, that is animals with human emotions, something which has never been done earlier in this space," says Varghese.
Adds Amitabha Lahiri, chief executive officer, Mash Advertising, the agency behind the campaign, "We based the final concept on the insight that nature provides no provision for a rented home with human beings being the only exception. Animals were merely an execution tool and a means to the end, to tell a gripping story that promises high recall value."
The first leg of the campaign is aimed at building "favourable pre-disposition to brand PNB Housing as a young, dynamic, innovative and tech-savvy brand for today's Indians". The agency is working on the second leg of the campaign which will focus on specific products and the delivery model.
The 360-degree campaign has been mounted at an estimated cost of Rs 20 crore. Apart from television, the campaign is also big on digital and outdoor media.
On the digital front, PNB Housing has taken to word play to convey that its loans can be customised according to people's needs. Within 10 days of its launch online, the brand received more than 2,00,000 clicks and 3,00,000 views on YouTube. A big-bang outdoor campaign covers cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad. The brand has also put up a weaver bird nest at traffic intensive locations such as Mumbai Airport. As a teaser, at select places, one piece of the nest was added every day to demonstrate how a nest - just like a house - is built over a period of time. Also, massive drop downs of such nests have been put up in prominent malls across India. Contextual branding on security doors is also part of the campaign to drive the message that the door to your dream home opens easily with PNB Housing Finance.
