Chief Marketing Officer / India
The number fell and the decision improved
- Branches supported
- 58
- Four states; March 2026
- Marketing and research colleagues
- 37
- Four functional managers
- Annual function budget
- ₹24 Cr
- Marketing and research; no lending authority
Decisions & consequences
01Changing referral-point material after customers assigned it the wrong authority
A review of our referral-channel material began with a concern from branch colleagues: some applicants arrived believing that a partner had already approved their loan. The partner's permitted role was to introduce the service and support the agreed enquiry route, not make a credit decision. The signs used the lender's brand prominently, with the distinction placed where it was easy to overlook. We tested the material with sixty participants and asked them to describe what the person at the location could do. Thirty-nine believed the location could approve a loan.
I worked with distribution and compliance colleagues on revised signage and a clearer explanation of the partner's role. The material identified the referral relationship and directed the customer to the lender's authorised process for an application decision. Partners received a short explanation they could use consistently. We did not ask marketing to change the appointment terms or grant a new authority. The work concerned how the existing relationship was presented and understood at the point where a household first encountered it.
Several partner managers objected that the revised signs made the location look less substantial and might reduce walk-in interest. I accepted that commercial concern but did not regard an inflated impression of authority as a benefit we should preserve. In a separate follow-up group of sixty participants, seven retained the mistaken belief. The result suggested an improvement in that exercise, not proof of universal comprehension. We changed the material across 46 partner points and asked branch teams to continue reporting the misunderstanding when it appeared.
The change required replacement production and partner briefings, with a less prominent presentation of the lender's branch-like identity. It also left a remaining problem visible: seven participants still misunderstood. We used their explanations to refine staff guidance rather than call the issue completely solved. The decision placed a clearer boundary between introduction and approval, which helped marketing contribute to growth without borrowing authority from the credit process.
Reducing the reported enquiry count before reallocating the budget
A quarterly campaign report contained 8,600 enquiry entries across branch activity, events and online forms. Several channels claimed the same eventual applications as their own acquisitions. Before approving the next quarter's allocation, I asked whether the report described distinct demand or repeated contact. Operations and analytics colleagues examined the entries using an agreed method, retaining cases that could not be confidently linked rather than merging them on a weak resemblance. The review identified 2,666 repeat entries and 5,934 distinct enquiries under that method.
The lower figure changed the apparent contribution of two heavily promoted channels. Their managers argued that reducing the count would make the quarter look unsuccessful and undervalue the assistance their teams provided after first contact. I agreed that later assistance mattered. We therefore separated the initial enquiry from subsequent support instead of giving every channel full credit for a supposedly new prospect. The report retained the journey and the limits of the matching method, including the possibility that shared contact details could belong to different people.
We reallocated ₹42 lakh of the following quarter's budget towards branch-supported formats and follow-up capacity whose contribution was better understood. That was a planning decision, not a claim that the review had created more approved loans. Credit decisions remained separate, and we did not attribute every funded account to the last recorded marketing contact. Finance reviewed the spending change, while analytics maintained the method so the next report could be compared on a consistent basis.
The immediate consequence was a smaller headline enquiry count and a difficult conversation about channel incentives. I preferred that to a larger number which rewarded repeated entries as though they were new households. The review did not establish that underlying demand had fallen. It established that our earlier description of it was inflated. That distinction mattered both to the board's understanding of the quarter and to the teams whose real contribution needed to be recognised more accurately than the original acquisition total allowed.
Separating information-only attendance from permission to pursue an application
We planned twelve household-finance sessions with local branch teams. The initial event form placed every attendee into a sales follow-up list unless they actively objected at the desk. I asked what a person would reasonably understand the session to be: an opportunity to learn about the process or an instruction to begin an application conversation. The programme could serve both interests, but it needed a clear choice. Attendance alone did not establish that the household wanted a lending enquiry pursued.
We redesigned the registration and closing explanation so participants could choose an information-only route or separately request contact about an application. The session addressed the process and the questions a household could prepare, without providing individual approval or property-title conclusions. Across the twelve events, 186 attendees chose information only and 74 requested application contact. The branch teams received the latter requests with the relevant permission recorded. We did not move those choosing information only into an automatic sales sequence to improve the programme's lead total.
Sales managers objected that the programme would now generate fewer contacts for the same venue and staffing cost. I accepted the smaller prospect list and changed the evaluation to include comprehension and the clarity of the next step. We also asked attendees what remained confusing, without treating a positive response to the session as evidence that a loan would suit them. The decision did not reduce the credit checks required for anyone who later chose to apply.
The result was a clearer distinction between education and acquisition, with 74 requested conversations rather than 260 assumed prospects. We retained the programme's cost in full instead of spreading it across a larger unconsented lead count. Some information-only participants might return later, but we did not count that possibility as a conversion. I wanted the company to earn a further conversation through a useful first interaction, while allowing a household to leave better informed and still choose not to begin a lending relationship.
Withdrawing a customer film after reviewing what it revealed
A customer-story film had reached final editing after ₹9.6 lakh of production expenditure. The customer had agreed to discuss the experience of buying a home and the service received. During review, the cut included a close view of a loan document and an account of a family financial difficulty that had emerged in an informal conversation on location. The production team regarded both as useful context. The permission record did not support treating every part of that conversation or every visible document as approved advertising material.
I asked the team to compare the proposed film with the agreed scope, including the intended channels and the details that could be seen or inferred. Compliance and the customer-relationship owner joined the review. We removed the document shot and discussed a narrower story with the customer, who preferred not to proceed with the revised public use. I withdrew the film. We did not make continued goodwill or service conditional on agreeing to a different permission after the company had already incurred its production cost.
The creative team was disappointed, and the campaign manager pointed to the booked launch date. I authorised replacement material explaining the application journey without using that customer's story. The original ₹9.6 lakh remained a production cost; it was not disguised as research or a future reusable asset. We also changed the production handover so that the permission scope accompanied the edit review and late additions could be examined before the final version was scheduled.
The decision lost a completed creative asset and required a different launch plan. It did not establish that customer stories should never be used. It established that a person's agreement to participate must remain connected to the actual story published. I wanted our team to see withdrawal as a decision available even late in production, especially when the alternative was to convert a customer's informal openness into a broader commercial permission they had not clearly given.