Nikhil Dhar Indigo Airlines: Getting it right

Selected as WCRCINT Marketing Mastermind 2023 – India’s Best Marketing Leaders, Nikhil Dhar of Indigo Airlines is an exceptional marketing leader with a focus on customer orientation, believer of content is the kind and relationship management

In conversation with Nikhil Dhar, Indigo Airlines

The Differentiators that set your Brand apart.

IndiGo is India’s largest passenger airline with a market share of 55.9% as of February 2023. The key differentiators that set our brand apart are:

• Simplicity – IndiGo’s communication is based on simplicity at its core. Air travel is complex, and IndiGo simplifies all this complex information with topical humour, crisp language and strong design to make it fun, functional and easy to remember for the customers.
• Small is big – IndiGo is obsessed with ever little detail to ensure that customers have a hassle-free experience. So, from cookie tins, back of headrest cover, water cups, luggage stickers etc. all the small things have been looked into to create micro wow moments for the customers.
• Design centricity – IndiGo focusses a lot on design first thinking – whether it’s the interior of the aircraft, social media post or food packaging – each of them are designed to create an impact. This focus on design has helped IndiGo offer affordable fares without compromising on quality. 

Marketing Campaigns in the last few years that are your favourite? (Executed by you)

While there are lot of interesting campaigns, but two campaigns are my favourite as below:

• IndiGo Abroad – In 2019, IndiGo had launched 8 new international destinations and it was critical for us to create awareness and increased revenue for the business. Created a new brand identify though “IndiGo Abroad” to create awareness and drive revenues. Our first integrated campaign (across all mediums) was able to give us a 10x return on marketing spends – also validated by winning an award in India’s prestigious Shark awards.
• Covid Campaign – Industry in turmoil, 2 months of losses. How could IndiGo reassure passengers to that first step onto a plane. We created a tag line for IndiGo as the Lean, clean flying machine – allowing us to positively interrupt, reassure India of our obsessive safety measures. This tag line was used across all touchpoints from website, social media, head rest covers, boarding pass, inflight announcements and even aircraft lavatory. The campaign had a massive impact with increase in market share to 56% from 48%, increase in NPS score to 54 from 41 and 16-point increase in customer confidence in IndiGo’s safety measures. The campaign won multiple awards across categories with the highlight being IndiGo’s first ever Effie award which is given for effectiveness in marketing and not just creativity.

How do you create trust with consumers aligning with the ethos of the brand?

Trust with the customers is one of the key aspects for any brand to ensure loyalty and longevity of the brand. One of the primary ways we create trust with the customers is by delivering on almost all our promises – affordable fares, on-time, courteous and hassle-free experience and unparallel network. The brand which can deliver its customer promise is able to create trust among the minds of the customers. The key role of marketing is to identify these customer promises and then convey the same to the customer. In IndiGo’s case, being on-time is a customer promise which we have delivered day and non-stop. Then we have leveraged our communication to create this as core competency for the brand such as IndiGo Standard Time (IST), On time is wonderful thing, etc. Hence, with both delivery on brand promise and communication come together, you can build long lasting trust in the minds of the customers. One of key caveat being as brand we should over promise which we can’t deliver as that creates trust deficit in the minds of the customers.

A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all. What has been your core strategies of retaining customers?

Typically, customers are not loyal to a brand but to a category. It is critical for any brand in the category to drive repeat business and create strong affinity in the minds of the customers. Some of the core strategies which we have leveraged for retaining customers are:

1. Deliverance of customer promise – Most important way to retain customers is to deliver on the core customer promise. As a brand if we can deliver on that promise, that creates stickiness in the minds of the customers.
2. Personalization – Customer value personalization as it makes them feel special. We have leveraged personalized as much possible to create a strong pull back for the customers. This is more critical in services industry where can try to remember the preferences such as which seat was booked last time, which sandwiched was ordered etc. This helps in retaining customers.
3. Loyalty program – Well-oiled loyalty program helps retain customers. We at IndiGo have also started a co-brand credit card program which can help us create a cohort of customers who always keep coming back as the program creates a positive loop back. This program also allows customers to earn points from their normal expenses and then convert them into air travel.

3 Brand Strategies of yours that were winners?

The 3 brand strategies which were winners are as below:

1. Focus on customers has been always a winner. One great example is during our Covid campaign we kept the focus on what customers wanted in those times – repeated reassurance of our rigorous sanitization efforts. Thus, we created a tag line for IndiGo as the Lean, clean flying machine – allowing us to positively interrupt, reassure India of our obsessive safety measures.
2. Content is king as nobody in this world wants to read or see what a brand really has to say/advertise. It is critical to create great content which then does most of the job in terms of conveying the message to the customer. Great content also reduces the investment required in marketing spends or improves the ROI on spends by reaching to wider audience.
3. Building long term relationships with influencers. In the current world of influencer marketing, instead of doing influencer marketing in bursts we focused on sustained efforts helping build an engaged community. This not only has helped get a better ROI on our investment but also create strong brand advocates with these influencer fraternity. We have seen a lot of our Influencers come back to us with more ideas and thoughts because they really liked our product and wanted to use it again.

The biggest Marketing Challenges today.

In the current world, the biggest challenge is to differentiate our brand from others in this cluttered environment.

What strategies do you use in terms of planning your personal career progression?

I would say there is no set path in planning for career progression as lot depends on external factors some of which are not in your control. However, there are few things which I practice to help me with my career:

• Delivery excellence – It is always critical to deliver what you have promised and create impact in your role and organization. Leaders and organizations value people who deliver on time and create impact.
• Take accountability – Always take accountability of not only your work but broader piece. Only by taking extra accountability you can showcase your skills beyond your role and position yourself for growth.
• Stakeholder management – It is always critical to manage stakeholders – internal and external to deliver great work on time.

Your advise to young people seeking a career in Marketing.

There are few advises that I would like to give to young marketers starting off now.

• Focus on the customer – Anything we do should always have customer at the center of it to be able to deliver the desired results. Marketing plays a very key role to bring the voice of the customers to the internal organization and young marketers should spend lot of time meeting customers to understand their perspective, triggers, and other points.
• Continuous learning – Marketing is a fast-evolving space, and one has to be a continuous learner to be able to stay ahead. As a young marketer, key your eyes open to new trends, new shifts and even new technologies impacting the world of marketing.
• Experiment but Fail Fast – It is critical for all of us to experiment to learn new things. We should always experiment in new ideas and thoughts, but we should always be ready to stop quickly if not working out.

According to you, what have been the greatest marketing tools that have impacted consumers the most and why?

It is very difficult to point to any one tool that has impacted the consumers significantly. In the recent past, things like social media, onmi-channel communication, mass personalization at scale, advancements in smartphone camera to create high quality content, and improved network connectivity to allow video consumption, have impacted customers significantly. E.g. social media network has turned a one-way communication from brands to customers into a two-way street. Now customers can publish queries, complaints, appreciations, etc. for the brands which was not possible earlier. This two-way street has also enabled customers to become more closer to their loyal brands and consume their content more. Similarly, ability to personalize at scale has helped the customers and brands to know each other better. Brand can share communication and recommendations which are relevant to the customers.

The best advise that you ever received, which became the turning point of your career.

The best advise which I received was the fact that a human life is all about learning new things. The day a human mind stops learning, then its decay starts. So, it is critical to be open to new avenues, new tasks, new roles and new opportunities which initially might seen really daunting.