SBI’s YONO app promotional sets the right tone

‘Lifestyle & Banking, Dono ’. The catchline in the promotional video perfectly captures the essence of YONO (You Only Need One), the new, unified integrated app from State Bank of India (SBI).

The video was screened here on Friday from New Delhi where Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar jointly launched the app at a colourful function.

Beamed live The event was beamed to all State capitals where SBI has a local head office (LHO), in front of an invited audience comprising top officials from the government and banks as well as leading public figures.

At Thiruvananthapuram, the video was presented to a cheering audience, with generous applause being reserved for the catchline that cleverly pitched ‘lifestyle’ ahead of ‘banking.’

The message was clear; the bank was looking to woo the millennials and generation-next with the new app, something that was reflected in the choice of the chief guest at the local event. The chief guest was young long jumper Nayana James, who said she had initially wondered why she should have been invited, but was ‘convinced’ after the promo video was aired.

S Venkataraman, Chief General Manager at the Thiruvananthapuram LHO of SBI, concurred, hoping YONO’s appeal would grow by ‘leaps and bounds’ as would Nayana’s performance at the jumping pit.

He said that a non-SBI customer could open an account using Aadhaar and PAN and proceed to install YONO on the handset. While ‘Lifestyle & Banking, Dono’ synced perfectly with YONO, its threat to render ‘useless, jobless and homeless’ a constellation of competing apps in banking and lifestyle space came through well and clear.

‘Clear up things’ This is also what the promo sought to convey, saying, ‘In a world cluttered with apps, we set out to clear up things....,’ making its intentions clear at the outset itself.

Set to foot-tapping music and interspersed with psychedelic light and sound effects, the video set a mood of joie de vivre with faces of SBI officials in the audience beaming with understandable pride. They burst into peals of laughter when the promo said ‘no questions asked, but conditions apply’ when it came to the speed with which one can access loans through YONO.

YONO is designed to meet lifestyle needs across a wide range of categories, 14 as of now, with SBI partnering with 60 leading names in the e-commerce space.

Developed using artificial intelligence, predictive analysis and machine learning, it promises to deliver maximum customer convenience, and has Android and iOS versions for download.