If you don't tell compelling stories, nobody is going to shower attention: Ravi Santhanam of HDFC Bank

Storytelling is considered the future of marketing, but compelling storytelling is said to be the proverbial steel for building a bridge between a company and a consumer.

Emphasising why brands need to rise above basic advertisements and start telling compelling stories via content, Ravi Santhanam, CMO, HDFC Bank, said, “If you don’t tell compelling stories, nobody is going to shower attention on you.”

In an interaction with BuzzInContent.com, he added, “Every customer is very busy in their life and a lot of things are happening on a daily basis. Nobody is going to get up from bed and think about us. So when you have an opportunity to interact with the customers, one of the important things is to tell a compelling story.”

Santhanam said if a story is good, people will pay attention. If the narrative is not good, engaging or relevant to audiences, they won’t react. “That is why it is important to tell these stories in the most right way,” he said.

Using content marketing as the informative content tool for top-of-the marketing funnel, it runs its own blog with over 700 plus articles, which it keeps refreshing according to the customer needs.

The blog:

https://www.hdfc.com/blog/

“We have multiple kinds of customers and we need to talk to them in very different ways. There are people who might be looking for very specific inputs. So content marketing for us might not be the bottom-of-the-funnel marketing. It is how as a brand we can help make people understand better money choices. There are lot of choices an individual has to make in terms of loans, deposits, etc. You have multiple questions related to finance and handling money is our forte. So we do a lot of content marketing, which is more of explanatory in nature. We have more than 700 articles on our website and a lot of organic traffic coming on to our website and we keep on refreshing them with the current needs of the customers,” he said.

It pushes these content articles on a one-on-one basis.

“So for us, content marketing is top-of-the-funnel activity, where we encourage people to know the choices that are available,” he said.

The brand has been spending regularly on this front and is now moving to create stories in the language that customers speak and in video formats.

Focusing on video format and vernacular content, he said, “Right now all our content on the blog is primarily in English and Hindi, but we plan to convert them in vernacular languages. We are working with a lot of technology partners to have the content in video too. Once the economy opens up, we will experiment with different channels too.”

While it measures ROI on the basis of the objectives of every initiative, it utilises influencer marketing for micro-targeting the customers. “The biggest advantage digital has provided to us is the ability to micro-target. We leverage micro influencer targeting via Instagram,” he said.

Last year, HDFC Bank, along with its social media and digital creative agency, Kinnect, had executed its Diwali campaign named ‘Make Every #WishComeTrue with #HDFCBankFestiveTreats’ along with multiple influencers.

The campaign:

When asked if the brand plans to explore branded content opportunities any time soon, he said, “We will evaluate this space; there has been a lot of opportunities coming in the OTT space so far.”

The brand is known for its positive change, social good campaigns. Along with AR Rahman and Prasoon Joshi, it had created the video song #HumHaarNahiMaanenge to spread the message of positivity and hope amid the pandemic.

The video: