Content creators push their content without understanding brands' TG, says Ankur Ogra of Grofers

With an influx of content creators, it is easy for a brand to find partners for their content. But with a decreasing attention span, it is a challenging task for them to weave a story that’s interesting and which also mingles well with the brand’s identity. But Ankur Ogra, Head of Brands Team at Grofers, thinks it’s a challenging task to find the right content partner as a lot of them often have unclear perspectives about a brand’s TG.

Ankur Ogra

“It’s not easy to choose a partner. A lot of times content partners try to push their content instead of trying to understand the TG or what the brand wants to communicate. They will keep pestering me for an idea. I ask them if they understand the TG that I am looking at but they often don’t have an answer. One thing each content creator working for a brand has to understand is ‘who does the brand appeal to? Who does the content appeal to and how?’ They have to focus on the relevance of the content to these TG. They are trying to sell their bit more than trying to understand who has to consume the content,” said Ogra.

However, Grofers is using content marketing to build trust among consumers by communicating its key values.

“Content marketing is very different from traditional marketing. It is a more credible and subtle way of communicating and establishing the key values of the brand. Online groceries are minuscule; it is about 1% in the last four years. It is we who have grown the market. There is still a lot of apprehension about online usage and there are trust issues. Hence, it becomes all the more important that you create some content to build credibility and trust in the consumers,” said Ogra.

Operating in the $1 billion e-grocery market in India, Grofers clocked Rs750-crore revenue in 2017-18 and has set a business target of Rs5,000 crore for the 2019-20 fiscal. Grofers, which started operations in December 2014, is now launching private labels to increase its margins.

In order to be the brand next door, Grofers is seen across platforms integrating with content subtly.

“We have done a lot of content integrations. We did one with the cricket world cup, Bhabhiji Ghar Par Hai, which did extremely well for us since this is the TG we are looking at. We syndicate the brand in a very subtle way, where the brand comes out and becomes a preference for the audience. These content integrations have always been a part of our core existence in a category where celebritiespull brands up tremendously,” said Ogra.

However, Ogra believes traditional and content go hand-in-hand.

“Content is not a substitute of traditional advertising, it’s complementary. When you see a brand on TV and then while surfing the internet, you might see it again. We have done content and seen impressive business results with Bhabhiji Ghar Par Hai. It has always been a part of the plan and has complemented one another."

Content is growing at a tremendous speed and so is the competition. For Ogra, one of the reasons why content marketing is growing in India is because the ideas that couldn’t be executed on traditional have found a home in the content space.

“I think it is developed because we are in a multiscreen world, where I am looking at the TG and fiddling with my phone. The level of competition when I am consuming the content is little and you would want to drop out of the advertising. The content space has come up because of the things that didn’t work in the traditional sense. I think it will continue to grow as the time spent by the consumer on digital increases and the attention span keeps getting shorter. Content will keep on becoming more important for any marketer going forward and become a part of every marketing and branding policy," said Ogra.