Decoding the 5 C’s of Deciml’s 'Influester' Campaign

In July this year, Deciml officially went live with its very first marketing campaign. I can truly say that it was the best induction I could have asked for when I joined Deciml back in March 2023! 

For the past two months, I have been mulling over this campaign (read: reveling in the positive outcome of it all!) and wanted to share a peek behind the curtain to elucidate to you how we went about planning and executing this riot of a campaign! Allow me to set a bit of context about the why and how of Deciml’s Influester campaign.

Deciml was built on a user-first philosophy, and the company-wide objective has always been to simplify investing and make it less daunting (and rather more interesting and exciting), especially for first-time investors and young investors. Every single person in the Deciml team worked tirelessly to make sure that the product, tech, content, and marketing department were aligned in achieving this objective. 

So, naturally even our first marketing campaign’s objective was to continue down this path and create a genuine interest in investing among our target demographic while educating them about Deciml and how they can leverage this micro-investing platform to jumpstart their financial future.

Here’s how we went about this undertaking.

Conception

Here's what we knew we definitely wanted from Deciml’s debut marketing campaign - 

1. To create awareness for the brand Deciml and its value proposition of frictionless, automated investing.
2. To show our target audience that micro-investing is a good option for those just starting out with investing.
3. To build the round-up investing category, by reiterating the simplicity and merits of the concept.

With these goals in mind, we set about working up a campaign idea that would not only strike a chord with young investors but also get them excited about investing. 

Conversation

Now, how do you get a whole generation excited about something that has been typically viewed as a tedious and time-consuming process? After carefully studying the behavior of Gen Z and young millennials on digital platforms (which is their main source of information and interaction with the world), we realized that they place a high amount of trust in certain content creators. 

Leveraging our high-trust, high-distribution network of investors who happen to be masters of their craft and boast of incredible engagement metrics (as were to see for ourselves!) was the key to unlocking our marketing strategy.

Most importantly - all our Influesters have cracked the code of how to effectively communicate and resonate with this audience segment, and our campaign strategy was to harp on this for a high-trust outreach rather than having to reinvent the wheel. 

Collaboration

In addition to aligning and onboarding the stars of our campaign - the ‘influesters’ - we also started conceptualizing our campaign with the magicians behind it all - Bare Bones Collective (BBC). BBC was simply phenomenal in identifying the core narrative, conceptualizing and scripting the Influester campaign. Their team joined us and hit the ground running - adopting a completely no-holds-barred approach in creating a narrative that would resonate with the audience, and leave them in hysterics. Whether we needed a writer, a sounding board, or even an acting coach - BBC was there to help us along every step of the way. This was honestly one of the most enjoyable phases of the campaign!

I can honestly say that every stage of collaboration - brainstorming, ideating, conceptualizing, creating, refocusing, going back to the drawing board, and creating some more - was pivotal in bringing everyone on the same page about what we were hoping to achieve through this campaign. Even the influencers were fantastic sports through it all and had a no-holds-barred attitude regarding humor at their own expense!

Hours and hours of conversation (and a total of 8 to 10 pitches from BBC!)  led to the creation of something bigger and better than a conventional advertising campaign. We were able to encapsulate a story that we wanted to tell the audience through a platform like Deciml, emphasizing who we are, what we do, and what ‘influesters’ mean to us and our journey. Our approach to the outreach became about information and education - to the point where, after long and detailed talks about it, we didn't even include the Deciml logo in our videos, because the messaging was the star of the campaign. Believe me, when I tell you, arriving at this decision was no easy feat - but we really wanted our vision and content to shine through in this marketing campaign, and our ‘influesters’ delivered superlative results in conveying our message to our audience.

Contribution

While influencer marketing, or partnerships with content creators is not new (some might even argue it is the norm!), we wanted to use this opportunity to take things a step beyond traditional brand promotions. 

Our campaign already had a strong narrative, but it would have been remiss in its execution if it hadn't borrowed directly from our Influesters’ own personalities. We needed the campaign to be honest and genuine (to essentially align with brand tonality at large) for it to really hit home with our audiences. The whole campaign was rooted in reality as the influencers did turn investors and became Deciml Influesters, and this was something BBC was quick to capitalize on. They were truly contributors in more ways than one, and I think the final outcome speaks to not only their monetary investment but also their visceral investment in making this campaign a success.

This is also the part where I credit the undeniable, unrelenting, and unstoppable efforts of Deciml’s young and dynamic team of exemplary employees. They understood the scale of what we were about to attempt and each and every member had a valuable opinion and contribution; all barriers of specialization and teams were broken down in lieu of achieving the bigger goal. The underlying company culture that we had been trying to inculcate at Deciml since its own inception was palpable in the meeting rooms as each and every team member was living and breathing this campaign.

Culmination

Our main aim for this campaign was always distribution and social reach, but its inventive approach also helped us to significantly increase our organic downloads and active investors on Deciml. The kind of engagement and feedback we received from this campaign validated our initial premise for it - there are a large number of people out there who just need investing to be simplified and made interesting for them. 

(The memes that followed were an unprecedented and hilarious bonus!)

This impactful campaign truly helped fast-track my onboarding with the company and the start-up ecosystem. I can honestly say that this - Deciml’s first-ever formal marketing launch - was exactly the kind of power-packed initiative that we wanted to officially debut Deciml with. 

The aim was always to create a new benchmark for what qualifies as thoughtful marketing. Still, this campaign exceeded that expectation and has honestly become a source of motivation - something that will keep us reaching for bigger and better in Deciml’s ongoing journey.

If you haven’t watched the campaign yet, check it out here:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8f3Rr5gg9SgsP8WGPh41DBuHvhodcbW-&feature=shared