Background
Yes Bank was a client of Windchimes, a boutique social media agency that I had joined in 2013. The bank made substantial investments in brand-strengthening associations and wanted to appeal to young professionals, NRIs and HNIs. As their agency, we saw a wonderful opportunity to create engaging social media content and differentiate from other private sector banks.
Yes Bank Maximum – The IPL Campaign
In 2013, Yes Bank signed a five-year associate sponsorship deal with India’s foremost event property, The Indian Premier League or IPL. At that time, Yes Bank offered the maximum interest of 7% on savings bank accounts, which led to a brand integration where every six in the tournament would be called a Yes Bank Maximum and the player to hit most sixes in every match would receive the Yes Bank Maximum Award.
We whitelabelled a cricket game developed by Zapak and converted it to a Facebook application, maintaining a daily leaderboard. People who hit the most sixes in the virtual game would win match tickets while other top scorers would get co-branded IPL merchandise.
We created plentiful content to engage social media audiences. This included fun characters posting tournament updates, witty memes around the IPL, inviting mass participation using trivia quizzes and initiating healthy debates to predict winners of upcoming matches. We also boosted UGC by incentivizing people to spot Yes Bank branding in stadiums and share pictures using #YesBankMaximum for a chance to win merchandise.
The IPL campaign grew stronger with every season and remains the best social media work ever done for Yes Bank. Metrics like share of voice, engagement rate and community growth used to skyrocket during the campaign. There were instances when #YesBankMaximum trended ahead of #PepsiIPL on Twitter. Undoubtedly, every instance of the campaign won several awards, including the prestigious CMO Asia Award.
Yes! I am the Change – CSR Campaign
This was an annual film-making challenge organized by Yes Foundation, the CSR arm of Yes Bank, where participants had to make a short film in 101 hours on a socially relevant theme provided to them. We managed the entire event on digital media, right from making the first announcement to unveiling the theme and inviting entries by promoting the event.
Shortlisted entries were screened in multiple cities at short-film festivals in the presence of eminent guests like Mr Amitabh Bachchan. Top 10 entries would receive financial support upto ₹2.5 million along with the opportunity to be mentored by remarkable filmmakers like Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Vikramaditya Motwane, Pritish Nandy and Shoojit Sircar.
We amplified the reach of the campaign by hosting all entries on the Yes Bank YouTube channel for public viewing and letting people vote on social media to announce a ‘popular choice’ winner.
Balancing Product Promotion and Brand Associations
We deployed social media campaigns to creatively promote all brand associations of Yes Bank. These included event sponsorships like the Times LitFest and movie partnerships like 2 States and Bewakoofiyaan, among many others.
While brand-building was the primary objective, we responsibly balanced the promotion of core offerings of the bank by designing creative campaigns with subtle product integrations that grabbed attention with content and gradually moved towards conversion, defined as signing-up for an online account opening or simply filling-in a lead form on their website. Here are some examples from one of the campaigns, designed to promote NRI Banking services.
