Brief Profile of Azmat Habibulla
Azmat Habibulla is the Chief Marketing Officer at South Indian Bank. She is a marketing leader and digital enthusiast who has led business transformation at some of the leading brands in the country in the FMCG & BFSI sectors. Azmat has a vast experience of more than 25 years, she has led impactful customer strategies, based on strong consumer insights. Her expertise spans across a wide spectrum of domains such as Digital marketing & business generation, Marketing Communication & Branding, Experiential and Knowledge events, Strategic Partnerships, Community Building and Thought Leadership initiatives.
Her career began in FMCG, working on popular consumer brands such as Promise Toothpaste, Bertolli Olive Oil & Barilla Pasta. She has led the launch of Meswak toothpaste right from product development, branding, market testing, pricing, packaging and till the final launch.
Her subsequent career transition to BFSI has provided her a fresh perspective and an in-depth understanding of marketing and product management in BFSI. She has worked in various B2C & B2B business segments like Retail, Corporate banking, Transaction Banking, SME, Rural Banking, NRI Banking, Wealth & Private Banking.
She is passionate about the use of digital technologies to grow businesses and have driven business acquisition and revenue generation by developing a robust digital marketing ecosystem across various channels. She has launched innovative digital engagements, including the development of digital communities like NRI Engage, SME Toolkit and a B2B marketplace, SME Empower.
She has also conceived immensely successful media properties like the Emerging India Awards, NRI Of the Year, India Business Summit and SME Elite 50 with media partners like CNBC TV-18, Times Now & ET Now. These properties have brought together Ministers of the government of India, Business leaders, Influencers and Industry Experts.
Passionate in Marketing caught up with Azmat Habibulla, Chief Marketing Officer, South Indian Bank
Q.1 Could you tell me a little about yourself and your assignment mandate as CMO of South Indian Bank?
I am a marketing leader and digital enthusiast who has led business transformation at some of the leading brands in the country in the FMCG & BFSI sectors, like Meswak toothpast, ICICI bank. My expertise spans across a wide spectrum of domains such as digital marketing and business generation, marketing communication and branding, experiential and knowledge events, strategic partnerships, community-building and thought leadership initiatives. Over 27 years of my career, I have developed and implemented impactful customer strategies based on strong consumer insights.
I am a change agent and have spearheaded some large strategic projects managing large teams and fostering cross functional collaboration to implement the organisational vision, through my leadership and people management skills. I am effective in building relationships with key influencers and leaders across the country and building effective content across initiatives.
I strongly believe what is learnt must be shared and invest time in mentoring and nurturing talent and am a keen contributor in industry events within the marketing fraternity.
I am also an avid traveller, adventurer, artist and a voracious reader and the author of a popular travel blog.
I lead South Indian Bank’s marketing and communication function as Chief Marketing Officer of the bank. Enhancing the brand value of the bank, is one of my key responsibilities. My team and I strive to create the right perception of the bank, manage media relations, scale up our visibility and design new channels of communication with younger audiences. I manage the customer experiences across various touch points over multiple channels.
Additionally, driving sales through digital marketing, adopting new digital technologies, managing data driven, and segmented personalized campaigns is also part of our core responsibilities.
Q.2 Since you are part of the core team of South Indian Bank, can you elaborate on the journey to date? What makes SIB special today?
South Indian Bank’s journey over 9 decades has been nothing short of an incredible voyage, 94 years have been passed by since we began our journey from the backyards of Kerala. We are no longer the townbound, trade-centric bank we were once. The establishment of the bank, in 1929, was to fulfil the dreams of a group of enterprising men who joined together at Thrissur, to provide the people with a safe, efficient, and service-oriented repository of savings and need-based credit at reasonable rates of interest.
Institutions like ours have carved a reputation for themselves based on a rich history of having served people for decades. We are associated with multiple generations of families and enjoy the trust of millions.
Over this time, the bank has evolved in line with the changing customer expectations, to partner with the growth of its customers. In the journey, continuously adapting and developing modern-age tech solutions.
Today we are a private bank backed by strong fundamentals and presence across the country. We stand tall as a tech : innovator & implementer amongst the first generation private banks in India.
The one thing that has been a constant, over the years, is the trust instilled by millions of loyal customers. Providing convenience and experience through technology, with the overarching layer of trust, owing to our legacy, is the winning combination to attract customers, especially the youth.
It is this combination of Trust and Tech that makes us special today.
Q.3 Could you guide me on the recent communication narratives adopted to reach out to Millennials and GenZ customers of the bank?
We want to become the preferred banker to India’s youth on the back of our digital and tech-savvy operations. Significant brand recall and visibility is achieved by aptly repositioning the brand and peppering with narratives that appeal to this target segment. We have tried to address this with our recent messaging of Trust Meets Tech since 1929, in our campaign.
This generation has aspirations and behaviour that is vividly different from the earlier generations. They are digital savvy and mobile first customers. They want things easy and instant. They also believe that the world is at the tipping point on environmental and social issues. On the same lines they are also looking for experiences rather than products and are getting away from ownerships to live in the moment.
The digital conversations to them are more youthful, engaging and attuned to their current reality. We also adopted a new contemporary look in all our communications to connect wtih the younger audiences.
We have used new age platforms like conversational AI based sticker based communications and new age media like podcasts etc to connect to the millenials and Gen Z. This has helped us drive intent driven conversations and enable high engaging media placements.
We have customised Next Gen and Youth plus offering for the youth. The idea is to create awareness, educate and through customized product lines, build affinity towards our bank.
In order to stoke conversations with them on the lines of financial literacy, news, environment, we also have a monthly magazine named ‘Students Economic Forum’ and a quiz format in association with some institutes across India. We also organise webinars regularly on themes such as investments financial literacy etc.
Q4) South Indian Bank is an erstwhile legacy bank, what were the challenges faced when tasked with the objective of restructuring the bank?
We are a legacy bank that came into existence in 1929. This comes with a lot of advantages and challenges. The average age of our customers is skewed towards the middle age group and we realise the importance of engaging with the next generation of consumers.
Our most significant challenge thus is to endear ourselves to India’s younger audience without alienating our loyal, older customers. We want to become the preferred bankers to India’s youth on the back of our digital and tech-savvy operations. While we have great digital first platforms which enable customer convenience, a good user experience, instant banking services, award winning safety features, this is not known to many.
Q5) How significant is the role of the bank’s Marcom cell in communicating narratives that fall in line with product developments at the bank?
I believe in today’s highly competitive landscape marketing plays a crucial role in creating a distinct identity for the brand, reaching out to the right cohorts with the right positioning and messaging. The onus is on the marketing to communicate narratives that align with the bank’s products and RTBs and is instrumental in creating awareness, shaping perceptions, and driving the adoption of the bank’s products and services.
We also play a key role in reaching out to the relevant stakeholders and update them about the bank’s development, announcements and products, and understanding their preferences challenges. We may call it as a two-way information route whereupon customers can be abreast on the latest developments at the bank and the internal stakeholders too can scope out on the interests of customers and design products and services that can address customer requirements.
Q6) The bank today is skewed towards the retail customer as part of its new business model, could you guide me on how marketing has aided the same?
Being a universal bank, retail has been our focus, just as it is for majority of the brands in BFSI. The Indian retail segment includes sub segments like mass market, mass affluent, HNW (High Net Worth), NRI (Non-Resident Indian) that no banks would want to ignore. We have retail products and we constantly evolve basis the market feedback and trends. We need to be competitive in terms of our products and create new banking services to attract new customers and meet expectations of the existing ones. Maintaining service quality and retaining the customers is one of the key aspects and we believe in the delight and happiness index of our retail customers.
Marketing supports the product development in different aspects and the onus is on us to communicate narratives that align with the products and RTBs and is instrumental in creating awareness, shaping perceptions, and driving the adoption of the bank’s products and services.
We also use a multitude of channels across the 360 degree spectrum of marketing to engage with the different sub segments of retail in a meaningful manner across our multiple touchpoints.
We communicate with the retail segment at large, through our robust corporate communication strategy and mass media discovery channels across mediums.Our segmented campaigns addresses the requirements of specific cohorts. Digital is a key channel targeting retail through discovery and performance campaigns. It has evolved a key lead generating channel, giving significant number of paid and organic leads. Our social channels play their own role through regular topical, product, engagement and moment marketing posts.
We can’t forget, the on ground experiential channels where through events, engagements and catchment centric activities we engage with retail consumers in a meaningful manner.
Q7) Please tell us about your latest campaign, Trust meets Tech?
The idea behind the campaign was to position South Indian Bank as a brand that blends trust and modern technology seamlessly. We want to become the preferred banker to India’s youth on the back of our digital and tech-savvy operations and the trust instilled in us by our millions of customers over three generations in past nine decades.
The multimedia campaign uses the metaphor of sports car racing to communicate the bank’s strength of using state of the art banking technology and blends it with its ethos of ‘Legacy and Trust’.
We believe Today’s consumers are hyper connected and seek convenience, experience, simplicity, safety and speed in banking services. All of this is delivered using the best in class technology. When this is coupled with the legacy of trust is when we get a winning combination. It is this critical messaging that is being communicated by the film.
