Not Everyone Gets It

CRED is India’s first application that rewards its users for paying their credit card bills on time. It was founded by Kunal Shah, former founder of Freecharge in April, 2018. Kunal Shah started CRED with a vision to create an exclusive community for India’s most trustworthy and creditworthy individuals. It helps to manage and pay all your credit cards in one place. It also reminds us about payments, offers on our credit card, and also monitors your spending. After selling Freecharge in 2015, Kunal Shah was researching another idea to make people’s life better. While researching, he found that so many things are automated in the developed nations like super markets with no cashiers, petrol pumps with no attendant, etc but there’s no such trustworthy system that helps the individuals to pay the right amount of credit card bills on time with zero additional charges.

Kunal Shah in his interview with yourstory, said, There are over 30 hidden charges and exorbitant interest costs that haunt you even if you pay a single rupee less than your full bill. The current model thrives on you making an error. It wants you to falter. The system has taken the good guys for granted for far too long. Creditworthy individuals deserve better. But the problem was, why would people pay their credit card bills through their APP, then the idea came to reward the trustworthy credit card users, who pay their credit card bills on time. With this strategy to attract users, CRED was started in April, 2018.

The IPL is the Super Bowl of India when it comes to advertising. Viewership reaches record levels, and so does the game of advertisers who launch their biggest campaigns of the year at this time. This time, it is the CRED ads with Madhuri Dixit, Anil Kapoor, Bappi Lahiri, Udit Narayan and Govinda that have become the most talked-about campaign of the season.

CRED, also the IPL’s official partner this season, has created quite a stir with its campaign ‘not everyone gets it’. The company is a member-exclusive online platform to pay credit card bills. It seems to have taken the cake home with an audition-styled campaign whose catchy lines stick in your head long after you have switched off the ad. 

CRED, whose ads are made in-house, turn the joke on itself. It acts as a picky client ready to settle with the boring call to action of downloading its app via ‘simple voiceover’ because every celebrity ‘audition’ is, to put it mildly, not up to the mark. This client wants big stars, creativity, flamboyance, pizzazz in its ads, but also doesn’t want it. The resulting ads beautifully give CRED all that and more. Even the jingles, which are extremely fun, take the name CRED at least 10 times. There couldn’t be a better win-win situation here. A tactically fulfilling ad that is also creatively satisfying.

We might see more such campaigns in the future where the company looks inward to crack a joke. This isn’t only because joking or commenting has become impossible, with everyone walking around carrying their ‘offence’ radar held up high. It’s also because the internet has emerged as the number one space for your brand’s ad and its importance will only grow with time. 

And if there’s one thing overshadowing hate on the internet right now, it’s memes. Every brand will have to find a way to make a meme of itself. It’s good to see even Indian brands warming up to the art of laughing at themselves.