Citi innovates to leverage social media might

Sanjeev Kapur, chief marketing officer of Citibank India, talks about the success of his brainchild ‘Dil v/s Bill’ campaign that garnered mass appeal, and how Citibank has been steadily increasing its brand value by leveraging the power of social media. Excerpts from the interview with DNA Money:

What was the idea behind the ‘Dil v/s Bill’ campaign?
The campaign communicated an easy way to buy through the EMI facility on Citibank credit cards. To achieve this, we integrated three different online and offline marketing mediums, which included social media, radio and malls in Mumbai and Delhi via skyvertising. Additionally, the campaign to offer ‘EMIs at no extra cost’ at over 500 merchant outlets was launched on Twitter and Facebook a few days before Diwali when shopping enthusiasm reaches its peak.

What was the response for the same?
The campaign helped double our EMI sales on credit cards over the same period last year. Our brand preference mind measure moved up by 15% from the previous month. We were also among the top 10 Twitter conversations, thanks to the success of the ‘Tweet a Cloud’ campaign that was trending for over 53 hours continuously. The campaign posts on Citibank India’s Facebook page, supplemented with live streaming of the Skyvertising event, reached out to more than 4.1 million users.

What are the other things that Citibank usually does using a social media platform to reach out to customers?
Citibank was the first bank to start a Facebook page in February 2011, and till date has among the largest fan following for a bank Facebook page in India with over 465,000 followers. We have a dedicated digital team, which uploads two posts daily on topics of importance to our clients like a newly introduced products and services. We individually address concerns raised by our customers.

Do you think you would be able to encourage the banking habit at a younger age through social media?
A majority of our social media audience is youth who are digitally savvy and prefer online banking. We continuously manage our content on Facebook, Twitter and micro-blogging sites to communicate with these customers in a format and manner they understand and are comfortable. An example of this would be our ‘Your ATM, your vote’ campaign, concluded in the recent past, where we initiated a conversation on Facebook asking our fans to vote for an ideal location to open a new ATM in their city. Through this innovative model of crowd-sourcing, we set up select ATMs in Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai at the locations of their choice. We were the first bank to do so in the country. Today, over 60% of our transactions are online.

Do you believe that social media, going forward could be adopted in a larger medium by other banks to promote their bank and services?
There is no doubt that leveraging social network, helps to add value to our customers. Historically when Citi innovates, it tends to become an industry standard over time.