In its latest campaign, MobiKwik asks users to ‘Spend Now Pay Later’

When your bank account has insufficient funds, have you had to urgently spend on medicines? Or, maybe pay the electricity bill? It sounds all too relatable, right? MobiKwik, in its latest campaign ‘Spend Now Pay Later’, illustrates such daily life payment challenges and promotes ‘MobiKwik Zip’ as the solution.

Conceptualised and executed by GingerMonkey, the campaign comprises three films that show how the protagonist deals with the challenge of having inadequate funds to make payments. The product, MobiKwik Zip, helps solve three tricky situations – paying electricity bill, buying medicines online and last-minute shopping. The first commercial that has gone live, shows how MobiKwik Zip makes life easy by helping one pay a large electricity bill on time.

Upasana Taku, chairperson, co-founder and COO, MobiKwik, said, “We strongly believe that ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ (BNPL) for daily life payments (e-commerce, groceries, bills) is the only way to deliver financial freedom to millions of Indians. This is the mission that lights our fire at MobiKwik. We are focused on addressing the unmet credit needs of Indians by combining the convenience of payments with the benefits of ‘Pay Later’.”

The campaign is targeted towards those people who are neglected by legacy financial institutions and have no access to credit. It targets the digitally savvy young Indians in the age group of 22-38 years, living in Tier-I and II cities.

“We want to bridge the gap and educate the users about the benefits of MobiKwik Zip through this TVC. Indians want to save, transact, make and receive payments, access credit, and insure against vulnerabilities. And yet, their needs are different, because the products they need are smaller in size, but affordable to them. Our mission is banking the underbanked – serving the millions of Indians, who do have a bank account, but get only limited savings and deposit services from their primary bank,” Taku added.

The ad has been launched in multiple languages. However, at a time when many brands are customising their ads for different languages audiences, MobiKwik has dubbed its ads.

“Since we are building the BNPL category in India, we have to take one step at a time. The Hinglish ad is made for the key geographies, where most of our target group (TG) resides. At the same time, we did not want to alienate other markets. So, we took a middle path of dubbing the current film into regional languages to get a sense of the market response. If it shows a positive result, we are happy to go the regional route,” said Taku.

The TVC will run on general entertainment channels (GECs), news, music, sports and info channels, along with a good mix of digital outlets. The brand has brought out an ad after a long time. Its last TVC was launched in 2015.

The latest TVC doesn’t dwell on the features and the specifications of the product, making it technical and jargonistic. Instead, it raises awareness about the product through a light-hearted and humorous approach, in line with its previous ad.

“We chose humour as a tone, keeping our target audience in mind, who are young working professionals. They love entertaining and humorous content, which gives our ad the edge to be sticky and memorable for them. It is important that the brand speaks the language of the users,” Taku added.

Abhishek Asthana, creative head, GingerMonkey, said, "The brief of the campaign was pretty clear, to break down the proposition of ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ to the target audience, who usually are not eligible for credit due to insufficient credit history. A cash-starved generation that doesn't compromise on lifestyle, is always in a dilemma, whether to spend now or postpone the purchase to the next salary cycle. Working on this insight, we picked out top use cases where MobiKwik Zip could be a lifesaver."

"Needless to say, the communication needed to be ‘zippy’ for a product that's named MobiKwik Zip. We are confident that the campaign will resonate with the target audience and achieve the intended business results for the company."

MobiKwik is currently on the road to an initial public offering (IPO) and has filed the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).