ICICI Bank is finally out of the woods it went into last year. But, the resurgence needs more push to regain its lost ground, says Deepak Ranjan Patra

October 10, 2008 was no less than a ‘Black Friday’ for India’s second largest lender, ICICI Bank. It was the day when the bank’s stock price nose-dived by a mind boggling 28% amid rumours of the bank’s potential exposure to the global financial turmoil, particularly to the collapsed global financial giant, Lehman Brothers. The situation had turned so critical that the bank’s Joint Managing Director (Chanda Kochhar at that point of time) had to announce in a television interview, “If people have fears around us, I’m re-clarifying these are small exposures considering our size and profitability.” Not only that, the bank also filed complaints with the regulators about some conspiracy going on to drag its share price down.

Those events looked big then, but in reality they were nothing more than a few short term glitches and their remedies were not difficult to find. The real damage, however, for the bank came in the form of a steep fall in its brand value. The bank responded to the crisis with a series of image makeovers within the next few months. Today, when one can safely say that the worst part of the global financial turmoil is over, the moot question is whether ICICI Bank has been able to rebuild its brand value to past levels?

Before understanding ICICI Bank’s brand value re-creation one must first understand what it has lost. ‘Brand Finance Global Banking 500’ report for year 2009 (published early this year) indicates massive erosion in ICICI’s brand value as compared to 2008. As per the report, ICICI Bank’s brand value plummeted over 60% (to $939 million) from $2.6 billion a year ago. Moreover, the bank’s ranking (in the list of top financial brands across the globe) has gone down from 64 to 108. Avers Unni Krishnan, MD, Brand Finance India, “Brand ICICI has faced a substantial erosion of value after the financial crisis. This is certainly a source of concern for the bank and it needs a strong hand to recover.” No doubt the bank has actually responded to the situation with a very strong hand, but with a soft voice.

Since November 2008, ICICI Bank has hit the accelerators in terms of its campaigns. Data available with AdEx shows, between November 2008 and October 2009, the bank’s ad volume has recorded remarkable growth, with a higher focus on television media as compared to the industry average in the BFSI domain. In terms of TV ads, while the volume of the BFSI segment has gone down by 24%, the duration for which ICICI Bank’s ads met the audiences’ eyes was 64% higher than it was for the year ago period (November 2007 and October 2008). Similar is the case in print media. Although ICICI’s ad volume has registered a 5% fall in print media, it’s still better than the industry average, which witnessed a 14% fall.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2010.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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