We will scale up our ad spends multifold this year: Prabhakar Tiwari

In a growing market such as India, financial education for years had been limited to Finance books in libraries. However, the Indian stock market has experienced significant growth in the past few decades, with the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

According to a report by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the number of demat accounts in India has increased from 2.3 crores in March 2010 to 5.3 crores in March 2021, indicating a rise in the number of investors participating in the stock market.

But despite this incremental growth, only around 8% of Indian households held financial assets in the form of shares, debentures, or mutual fund units in 2019 as per a survey conducted by the Reserve Bank of India.

Having said that, investor education becomes an important responsibility of any market leader. Earlier, investor education was mostly done in a manner which is very didactic and pedantic as opposed to being interesting and snackable, therefore, in a recent move, Angel One attempted to take a jab at it through its recently initiated and ongoing campaign- #JagrukTejaBhai, as per the company’s Chief Growth Officer- Prabhakar Tiwari, who also happens to head Sales and Marketing at Angel One.

“Teja bhai is a well-recognized character who over a period of time has been a look-up-to person for bringing about an ease to understanding the jargon associated with the stock market. Stemming from this, we decided to take a step up and launch #JagrukTejaBhai, a video series as part of Angel One’s commitment to investor education and to put the same efforts and finesse as a marketing organisation in terms of our creativity and production quality so that the topic which is of interest to investors become less complex and more simple whilst being enjoyable,” he said.

Jagruk Teja Bhai Trailer Launch-

Tiwari also emphasised that the agency behind the campaign, Perfect Creative, has been working with Angel One for a long time, and has been a great partner who has assisted the company in scripting and editing the eight-part series that has already been rolled out and will continue to run as not less than 40 episodes are already in the pipeline.

“This campaign has been multifaceted in multiple touch points apart from regular social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, etc. and will be leveraging Telegram as well. Telegram is a very strong medium for us to engage with our community,” he said.

Commenting on how the particular campaign adds to the overall brand positioning of Angel One, he highlighted that when one looks at Angel One, it is evident that the company is talking to people who are actually looking at building their lives around smart choices when it comes to shopping, listening music or even investments because, for the fintech broker, it's all about simplicity, trust and making the market accessible to everybody by democratising the stock market experience.

“We’re a mass player with a large customer base of already having a 25% kind of market share in incremental Demat account opening, therefore for us, we would rather take a topic like this and convey the message in a friendly and humorous way rather than sounding very exclusive or intimidating,” he said.

Teja Bhai’s explanation of phishing in a fun way -

Touching upon the marketing objectives associated with the campaign, he shared the viewpoint that because the long-term objective is to increase the trustworthy score, it was prudent that the company spread awareness and bring down the national scams taking place in the capital market by such initiatives.

“In fact, RBI has reported around 13,000 bank frauds in the financial year 2023, which is a significant increase as compared to last year and I can assure you that there's a high frequency of frauds in the capital market as well coupled with banking, payment options, and many other associated financial infrastructures which actually feed into the capital market. Therefore, investor education is in the interest of not only us or any other player but also the RBI, SEBI, exchanges, etc. because if investors are not bothered about fraud and they know how to kind of take care of themselves in their digital life they would be incrementally spiking their investing, spending and banking money,” he added.

He then went on to emphasise that in the current times, making people aware of fraud through SMS, emails, brochures or any other information material is creating a blind spot and hence what is needed is an extremely trustworthy upfront media-heavy communication campaign which people cannot ignore owing to the relatability, friendliness or even a humorous approach.

Jagruk Teja Bhai’s version of dealing with fraud calls-

According to a survey conducted by Local Circles, a private firm, 42% of Indians experienced financial fraud in the last three years and of these, 74-75% of individuals who experienced it failed to get their money back.

“Teja Bhai is our central figure and our mascot for no fraud vision in trading. He's a young dynamic and relatable character and therefore in each video that targets the GenZs and Millennial audiences, we have portrayed him talking about potential fraud and prevention measures in a humorous way and that is what’s making the campaign more engaging and capable because what is critical is not to talk in a surface level way but provide actual in-depth information,” he opined.

Throwing light on the target audience for Angel One, he also pointed out that as a brand, the company’s core focus is to always get more participation and be a brand that is accessible to all. However, the kind of people that Angel One wants to attract at the moment is a large chunk of the GenZs which is a younger population who gets a thrill out of the thought of making money through trading.

“Almost 90% of our customers come from tier 2, tier 3 and beyond and of these, 80-90% of the people are the first timers in the market therefore the challenge is to make these not very sophisticated but digital savvy people not only interested in financial topics but talking to them as investment is very close to one's heart and involves a huge amount of money as well,” he said.

Teja Bhai takes a dig at all those giving unauthorised stock recommendations-  

Upon being questioned as to why did Angel One opt for bringing their mascot to life and not amplify through the influencers on social media, Tiwari snarkily stated that considering that in times like these when influencers are themselves indulging in defrauding people in certain cases, why would one make them the face of the brand, knowing nothing about their past or future!

“Teja Bhai had already existed for us and while that guy does certain things which are not right, one still sees him as a helpful guy, because he at least does it in a fun way. Also, in this way we have more control as well because we are committed to our customers' experience and not letting them fall prey to fraudsters,” he said.

Sharing more intel on the advertising and marketing efforts and plans of the company, with the market sentiment being that of recession setting in, Tiwari shared that being a listed and quite profitable company, Angel One would be scaling up its marketing spends this year since the company is poised to launch its much awaited Super App campaign in Q2 of the current fiscal year.

“Now, if you look at YouTube’s MAUs, Meta’s MAUs, or even BARC households in India, there are roughly 60-80 million potential customers out there for a shorter term and therefore our job is to reach out to the people who have an affinity towards financial topics, surround them, show them our proposition and convince them in that point in time. If it happens through the business channel, business news channel, normal news channel, YouTube, Meta platforms, CTV, OTTs or other touchpoints, we will go ahead and do it because it's about the audience you want to go behind and the media task that each medium has to play,” he said.

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