Salaam Loans
Tata Capital
Issue 47 | June 2018
Agency
Leo Burnett Mumbai
Creative Team
Managing Director Leo Burnett India and CCO, South Asia Rajdeepak Das Executive Creative Director Vikram Pandey Creative Team Geo Joseph, Sagar Parab, Bhuvan Bali, Yash Ambre, Gaurav Bumb, Vipul Joshi
Production Team
Digital Agency Indigo Production House Prodigious
Other Credits
CEO, Leo Burnett South Asia & Publicis Communications India Saurabh Varma Managing Director Leo Burnett India and CSO Dheeraj Sinha Business Head Oindrila Roy Account Directors Neil Mogre, Hemal Thakkar
Date
May 2017
Background
In India, 40% of the people don’t have access to any organised financial system. The majority of these belong to the most underprivileged section of society and their only hope of a better life is through a loan. But, unfortunately, absence of a credit score makes them ineligible for financial help from the banks. Compounding the problem, credit assessors do not evaluate people on their dreams and ambitions, simply using lack of a credit score as an excuse to reject loans.
Idea
Salaam Loans were the world’s first democratised loans. The power to lend money moved from the hands of a few biased bankers to India’s 200 million-strong Facebook community, revolutionising the loan-approval process.
When people wanted to borrow money, they made a video telling their personal stories and explaining how they would use the loan. Video booths were set up across the country, starting in Dharavi in Mumbai, Asia’s single largest slum, where people could record their applications and upload them to the Salaam Loans portal.
Any video that got a thousand ‘likes’ got a loan.
Results
TATA Capital Salaam Loans left a positive impact on the entire nation.
The campaign reached 47.5 million people. It led to 1,054 applications for loans from people who had previously been shown the exit door by other loan providers.
14 million loan approvers engaged on social media to help the ‘unloanable’ acquire a life-changing loan.
Our Thoughts
‘Likes’ as currency has, serendipitously, I think, begun to appear in campaigns all over the world. (See Opel on pages 38-39 and Strellson on pages 46-47). I love this campaign for two reasons. One, it gives people denied an education the opportunity to build a business. Two, you’d imagine that viewers of the application videos might be mischievous in their ‘likes’ so the most hopeless of cases got rewarded but this turns out not to be the case. People judged the applications on their merits. When it comes to money, even other people’s money, it seems it is too important to mess around with it.
Talk about brand involvement. Being able to have a positive effect on someone else’s life through Tata Capital simply must make you feel a brand manager yourself.