CRED has roped in Rakhi Sawant and Sonam Bajwa for two new campaigns that use humour and cultural references to flag two common financial pitfalls: loan stacking and bounced EMIs.
In the first film, Sawant plays an over-the-top European character with a dramatic outfit and accent. Perched on a pile of fake snow inside a metro train, she quips that not everyone can afford the Alps, so the metro will have to do. She then explains loan stacking, the habit of taking fresh loans to repay existing ones, where each new loan piles on more interest and makes repayment harder. The spiral ends in what she calls the “most amazing stage of financial ruin,” or as experts put it, the Great Depression. Her verdict: there is nothing great about it. The film closes with a pointed line: “Money is not the root of all evil. Absence of it often is.”
The second campaign, featuring Bajwa, tackles missed EMI payments by comparing the bounce in her hair to an EMI bounce. While a blowout can use some bounce, a missed instalment brings bank bounce charges, late fees from lenders and potential damage to your credit score. The campaign sums it up neatly: “The purchase stays the same price. The mistake keeps getting more expensive.” It ends with, “Sonam can bounce. Your EMIs can’t.”
Though the films cover different aspects of personal finance, they share one creative approach. Instead of conventional, instructional messaging, CRED relies on celebrity-led humour and wordplay to make the consequences of poor repayment habits stick. The challenge lies in keeping the tone entertaining without diluting the seriousness of the subject. The message beneath the Alpine fantasy and the hair-care analogy is simple: borrowing comes with obligations, and ignoring them only makes the problem costlier.
