- CRED commercials broadcasted during the IPL series were very well received, but also got heavy criticism on social media. Many outrightly rejected the app. Many outrightly shared their opinion about the app. Many even mocked CRED.
- CRED app was among the top 50 downloaded apps in the App Store a few times in the last few months.
- They spend quite a lot on online advertisements, presumably, they have got some investments as well which also became a reason for mocking.
Let’s see what CRED does from the purview of marketing.
CRED did get a lot of attention when they launched commercials with yesteryear Bollywood actors, Rahul Dravid’s famous “Indra Nagar ka Gunda hoon mein”, etc. Of course, their content is talk-worthy. They succeeded in their agenda of getting people’s attention.
Did it end there?
No, there were so many different views shared on social media, especially on Linkedin. Many were not in favour of them, let’s say that social media will mostly have such views. But there were negative comments from CRED users as well.
The main thing to notice from the above post is the line, “Still figuring out why you must use the product?”.
So the implied meaning is – the product is not worthy of the attention it gets through the commercials.
Must be some harsh truth, right?
Their commercials have grabbed so much attention that some spoofs have been made based on them.
They’ve managed to get into the top 50 downloads on the App Store a few times recently.
Let’s see why they must’ve ignored the use case part
- The top 1% of their financially well-off target audience is not looking for use cases. We believe what they look for is fun, feel-good, and lifestyle-enhancing products.
- Use cases are not a very strong notable thing on ads, commercials, or their marketing team thinks so, which is fair.
- They might think that their product is something that needs to be used and experienced, not much to be talked about.
All said and done, commercials are not used to explain use cases. Any commercial’s foremost goal is to grab attention and get a brain share of the viewer – which they have done extremely well. (Not target audience, not prospects, just a brain share).
People consume videos as long as it is entertaining.
Why do CRED marketing work?
What they do bring results (in terms of marketing) because their marketing approach is like a Carrier Strike Group.
Why what they do might be right?
Here is a short video about their business model.
After all, the founder of CRED is not a first-time entrepreneur, he is someone successful in a similar business and he knows better. Even if CRED fails, the amount of learnings he would get out of it is something immeasurable. Remember what Bezos said about the failure of Firephone to the investors.
Startups are something, you can’t look for P&L in the initial times – stressed by Mr Vijay Anand – The Startup Guy. He writes a lot of interesting stuff about startups.
Finally, we are not an agency looking for projects from CRED. This is our interpretation of their marketing.
