Lack of quality content creators in India is a challenge, says Ravi Saxena, MD, Wonderchef
In a freewheeling chat with BuzzInContent.com, Saxena talks about the kitchenware brand's high standard of requirements from content creators and how it is driving its marketing activity solely on digital through content
Launched by chef Sanjeev Kapoor and Ravi Saxena in 2009, the premium kitchenware brand, Wonderchef, drives all its marketing activities through content on digital. The Rs 450-crore brand spends its entire marketing budget, which is 7% of the total revenue, on the digital medium. For the brand’s Managing Director, Ravi Saxena, any digital activity is nothing without content. “For us, our lifeline is digital marketing and digital marketing is nothing without great content. It’s not about one great slogan and creative idea; it’s about generating content with great rigour to engage with the customers on a daily basis.”
Ravi Saxena
The brand’s content strategy has been setting the bar high for its competitors in the digital space with 10 times more following compared to its immediate competitor. Saxena said, “You don’t get so much of following on Instagram and Facebook without content. We have 11 lakh fans on Facebook. The next brand in our industry would be at 1 lakh. On Instagram, we have 3.1 lakh followers whereas the next brand would not be even 10,000.”
The brand has been built without using traditional media at all. Giving reasons for allotting its entire marketing budget on digital, Saxena said, “We use digital because marketing is all about targeting the right segment within a certain budget. When I talk to the premium target audience on digital, I am not just talking to the women but also men who are interested in cooking and health and fitness in a focussed manner.”
On TV, the brand finds a lot of spillage of the marketing spends and hence doesn’t put any money on the medium at all. He said, “f I am on TV and limit myself to the English channels, I am limited to a specific set of customers who are interested in the genre of content that the channel produces. If I go on GEC, I am talking to a larger audience, but only 10% of it is relevant for me. But I am also paying for the rest of 90%. There is a reach, but I don’t need that kind of reach.”
Even after driving the brand’s marketing strategy through content, Saxena finds a lack of quality in content produced in the industry in terms of grammar, thought process and the understanding of the brand. “There are a few bloggers who can write good English. The bloggers make so many mistakes. The basic understanding of right language, grammar and syntax are missing. So many people claim to be bloggers but can’t even put together a good sentence in English. I can’t afford mistakes as a brand. Quality of thought process and feel has to come together. There are good people as well and we are learning and improving. But a lot more needs to be done,” Saxena said.
Another challenge the brand focuses is on the amount of time and attention any individual good quality content creator spends on the brand. “When we find a good person, they are overloaded with work as they are so good at it. Good people are few. They take on the project but are not able to do justice with the commitments,” he said.
The kitchenware brand has plans to expand its marketing budget by next year and is open to more content partnerships from outside. Although, for Saxena, it’s not easy to match a brand’s expectations when the creators and platforms approach them with content pitches. He said, “We are more demanding. We want more effective results. We are willing to pay but want to have the desired effect. It is not something that everybody is able to commit. They should understand us well and our way of working.”
For Saxena, the content should be talking to the core target segment in the language that appeals to them. He said India is a very heterogeneous country and people are different; whatever content the brand produces should match its consumers’ psychographics.
Taking the path less travelled in the kitchenware space, the brand has come out with animated cute video series which it plans to continue with in the long-run on social media. There are three videos that are situation-driven with elements of humour and curiosity. The products have been subtly placed into the storyline of the videos. So far, the videos have fetched over 4.4 million impressions across social media and over 75,000 engagements. The company also saw a significant rise in the website’s traffic after the release of these videos.
Talking about the insight for which the brand undertook the animation route, Saxena said, “We are a premium brand. Our customer profile is also premium. This customer profile is youthful in nature. They are not necessarily young in age. These are the people who like colours and want to try out new things. Plus this is the age of animation. The biggest Hollywood blockbusters are animation-based. Adults enjoy animated movies. Unlike earlier times, people feel younger even at the age of 50. Wonderchef has been beautifully able to leverage that change.”
He said, “One part of the video is animation, the second part is women empowerment. In the videos, the woman is shown as the protagonist and the hero of the storyline. That’s how we started the company. We wanted to generate women employment. Hence, we have 60,000 women doing direct selling with us. My partner Sanjeev Kapoor also stands for the same. The theme in the videos is woman empowerment. In the future also you will see the same theme.”
In the past, the brand has also worked with Pocket Aces’ food channel Gobble for the video ‘Love vs. Food’.
Last year on Rakshabandhan, the brand even released a four-minute film ‘Express your love this season’, which garnered over 76,000 views.
The video:
Saxena doesn’t like to call the brand kitchenware but a lifestyle brand. “We are enhancing the lifestyle of people. We give the consumers the feeling of fulfilment the way a nice clothing brand would do. The tagline of the company is ‘Cook with pride’. With this premise, I started the company with the thought that cooking should be fun, premium, easy and lifestyle-oriented. It’s kind of a fashion brand,” he concluded.
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