The World Gold Council (WGC) is targeting young investors with its latest campaign, highlighting gold as a secure and versatile asset.
In conversation with Medianews4u.com, Arti Saxena, Director and Head of Marketing, India, World Gold Council, noted that the target audience is in the age group of 18 to 35 years.
“65pc of our population is less than 35 years. From a gender perspective we are focusing on both male and female audiences; we are looking at people who are starting to earn. There has been so much chatter, conversations around investment. People when they start to earn also look at investment options and are mostly seeking out high-risk, high-reward asset classes,” she said.
The campaign talks about gold as a secure investment option. A third of respondents in a survey conducted by WGC already owned Gold. Consumers buy bars and coins mostly because of the cultural or traditional reasons during Akshaya Tritiya or Dhanteras, it was observed.
The survey also revealed a gap: almost 65pc of the respondents mentioned that they don’t understand how gold works, and that’s the reason they don’t actively buy it.
Through this campaign with the tagline ‘Power your portfolio with Gold,’ WGC is explaining gold’s role so that people can think about it when they are investing and dedicate a certain percentage to gold to balance their portfolio. That understanding is currently missing, added Saxena.
Marketing strategy
The marketing head explained, “Since young investors are involved the campaign is digital, integrated, and there are multimedia platforms that we have considered. We have considered YouTube, social media such as Facebook and Google display network. This is essentially for the reach matrix ensuring that we reach all the young investors. We have also looked at OTT platforms and we have considered Disney+ Hotstar.”
“Apart from this we have also looked at a lot of business and finance platforms such as Moneycontrol, Financial Express; we have also considered news apps like Inshorts and content discovery platform Quora. Since it’s a Q&A-based platform, it is possible to track people who are asking questions around investments and we are targeting them. Apart from these we have also targeted PhonePe since it’s a transaction-based app. There are people who have a high affinity towards investment; so we have considered it in our media mix.”
The target is to reach 45mn people in the young demographic. While for those above 35 years there is a natural affinity to buy gold, younger audiences who are not buying gold now may hinder future demand and hence the targeted campaign.
Speaking on the earlier campaign ‘You are Gold’ which is on its last leg, Saxena explained that it aimed to attract the millennial and gen-Z audience highlighting the many qualities that make them who they are. The campaign was conceptualised last year and WGC aimed to position gold differently in the jewellery segment.
“It spoke about every moment which is meaningful in life whether you are starting your job, opening a new start-up, all those occasions that make you deserve to be celebrated with gold,” she notes.
The integrated campaign that started in 2021 added an influencer leg this year. These included micro influencers (500k to 1mn-plus followers) who have overcome challenges and celebrated the day with gold – like a Paralympic player who won Gold for India, who bought herself a tennis racquet-shaped pendant.
WGC also engaged women achievers whose stories are not known as they don’t have followers. One of them being Kanika Tekriwal, a cancer survivor who runs chartered plane service JetSetGo. Captain Shivani Kalra, who was involved in operation Ganga (evacuation of Indian students in Ukraine), was another real life achiever whose story was told in collaborating with publisher Woke.
Another partnership, this one with iDiva, saw video interviews with Mouni Roy, Sania Malhotra and Rakul Preet (celebrities with a following of 25 to 30mn), on their journeys and challenges.
“We are tapping on all these different genres, partnerships to ensure that we tell as many stories as possible, celebrating all these beautiful moments through gold and reaching out to different target audiences,” explained the marketing head.
The influencer marketing spend, which was around 10 to 12pc of WGC India’s media budget last year, now stands at 15 to 17pc.
