Client Profile

KASB Funds Limited (KFL) is in the business of providing investment and savings solutions to its investors through a range of investment products. KASB Funds serves a large and diversified investor base with its investment products, ranging from retail investors to high net worth individuals and from pension funds, employee benefit funds to corporations and institutions. KASB Funds also provides investment advisory services to a host of clients.

Business Need

KASB Funds was planning the launch of their 3rd mutual fund, the KASB Balanced Fund, in the Pakistani marketing. The KASB Balanced Fund is a diversified mutual fund that distributes the total investment capital between secured and unsecured investments to create more profit generating opportunities for their customers. For the fund launch, they needed to create the brand and marketing collateral that would be used to secure investments from the public and corporate sector.

Our Proposal

Having already worked with KASB Funds Limited on the launch of their 2 previous funds, the KASB Income Fund and the KASB Stock Market Fund, we had an extremely strong working relationship with the management team and a clear understanding of how they wanted to the fund branded. On the previous launches, emagine’s responsibility was limited to the brand creation, creative and providing marketing support, but on this campaign, the emagine team proposed that we oversee the entire campaign to deliver better results for KASB Funds.

Our Solution

Starting with a detailed meeting between the KASB Funds management, marketing team and emagine creative, we were sought to understand the key salient features and the unique sales point of the mutual fund. These characteristics are intrinsic for the proper development of any brand and its marketing collateral. Additionally, KASB Funds management team explained how they would like the brand to be positioned in the market and in the customer’s view.

The first step of the process was the development of an internal document that would be used as guidance by our creative team for brand development and logo design. The creative team at emagine worked on putting together some initial designs for the team to review and discuss, while the marketing team started work on developing the content for the KASB Funds website and marketing collateral. Once the brand was sketched by our creative team, we further streamlined the logo and went to work on developing the advertising campaign.

We wanted to bring a diverse image into the domestic financial services industry that would be more memorable and better define the brand rather than the standard picture images that were traditionally used. We looked at a variety of illustrations, but settled on an image of tree in full bloom with gold coins as the trunk. We felt that the image best represented the value that was inherent in the mutual fund and best expressed the key salient feature of a stable growing investment as the strength of the fund. The tree was so well received by the KASB Funds management team that it became the central image of the entire campaign, transferred across all marketing and promotional materials.

emagine’s marketing team developed the content for the marketing collateral, while the KASB Funds team developed the content for the Trust Deed and Offering Documents that would be distributed to investors. The content focused on helping the potential investor understand the value, benefits and returns that the mutual fund would provide its investors and how the fund was operated in terms of investments and returns.

Once the marketing collateral was prepared and released to the commercial printers, the emagine team’s concentration shifted to the advertising and promotional activities. Our strategy was spread across multiple mediums, both online and offline, to better reach the potential investors with the right message. The advertising and promotional collateral included print advertisements, standing banners, online banner advertisements, and outdoor banners. All of the collateral was distributed to KASB Bank branches, authorized resellers of the fund, and high traffic areas of Karachi to deliver the greatest return on investment to the client.

The campaign took a serious blow right before the mutual fund launch when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated pitching Pakistan into a tailspin of problems in each metropolitan cities of Pakistan – what happened to be the target markets for the mutual fund. We suspended all campaign activities for one week to allow the country to mourn, rather than launch the product only to find that it had not achieved our desired results.

Result

KASB Funds Limited received a great deal of recognition and interest due to the campaign that emagine had developed for the launch. The idea and image were so distinctive that organizations (institutional investors) were so impressed with the branding that it generated a great deal of interest from their organizations.

When KASB Funds launched the KASB Income Fund, the total investment into the fund was Rs. 25 million. When the second fund was launched, the KASB Stock Market Fund, the result doubled to Rs. 50 million in investment capital. The KASB Balanced Fund set a new record for returns on a marketing campaign for a mutual fund in their history. The KASB Balanced Fund generated over Rs. 100 million and still stands today as one of their most recognizable campaigns.