Axis Bank want us to pause our love for bargaining

“Indians can’t live without a bargain and Chinese people can’t give you a bargain,” Canadian stand-up comedian Russell Peters joked once during a show.

He was bang on and to such an extent that Axis Bank’s latest ad is asking people to pause their love for bargaining, at standalone stores in particular. The reason: these stores are one of the worst-affected since last year’s COVID-induced nationwide lockdown.

AutumnGREY has made the ad for the bank. It illustrates how, since independence, India’s love for bargaining has only deepened over the years.

Take a look at the stores shown throughout the years in the spot; single owner, not too fancy, surviving quarter to quarter… No wonder the owner’s frown deepens with each frame because he can’t afford to give a bargain, but has to, or else he’ll have to shut shop.

Since the lockdown, it is these stores that have suffered the most because they didn’t have any safety net to fall back on.

Rajiv Anand, executive director - wholesale banking, Axis Bank, said, "Bargaining is a very deep-rooted phenomenon in our culture. We do it without a pause. But 2020 and 2021, without a doubt, have been the hardest years for small businesses. With #PauseTheBargain, our primary objective was to start a new initiative, where all of us could do our bit, to help get small businesses back on their feet. Hence, can we, for some time, #PauseTheBargain."

Bodh Deb, Sr. Vice President – Integration & Growth, AutumnGREY, said - “When it comes to Axis Bank, we have two simple and straightforward digital objectives. Through all our digital-first campaigns we either drive business or we drive brand love."

"With regards to driving brand love for Axis Bank through digital, our endeavour has always been to not just merely act as a mirror to our society but also play a role in instilling new, positive ideas that can play an integral role in guiding and taking our society forward in the right direction."

"#PauseTheBargain was one such idea from the AutumnGREY team. We are immensely proud of this campaign. We spent close to three months writing hundreds of drafts and rejecting all of them ourselves and starting from scratch again. We were restless and didn’t sleep for nights till we finally cracked the screenplay narrative one Sunday early morning after an all-nighter. "

"But all the hard work and our relentless pursuit to get it right has more than paid off as we have received an unprecedented amount of love and adulation from our Axis Bank client, our other clients, folks from other agencies in our industry and most importantly the people of India. They all really appreciated the thought behind the idea, the execution and the timing of the campaign.”

A couple of months ago, Axis Bank had released an ad that, once again, focused on these SMEs, and how e-commerce had affected their livelihood.

In the spot, the bank illustrated how the features we expect from online shopping sites are similar to those our neighbourhood shops offer.