Content marketing generates three times as many leads as outbound marketing: Anuja Mishra of Godrej Consumer Products

The content marketing field is ever-evolving in India, though certain perceptions need to be changed around it. One very important notion content marketing has to break is that many marketers think the medium can help only high-involvement category brands such as cars, insurance, jewellery, etc., in fetching business results in the long run. But low-involvement category brands, where buying decisions are made quickly, use content only to increase engagement, affinity and awareness and not to fulfil business goals.   

In an interaction with BuzzInContent.com, Anuja Mishra, Head of Marketing for Personal Care and Hygiene, Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL), rubbished the notion attached to content marketing in the FMCG category and said, “The right kind of content can definitely help in not just building the brand but also leads to sales. It’s all about how impactful the messaging is and how well it’s communicated to the audience. Content marketing has a lot of benefits, which has given rise to its surge across all brands. However, it’s important to make sure that we do not just create content but create the ‘right kind’ of content. Our team works on these aspects on a daily basis.”

The brand that began its content marketing journey last year sees a huge potential for it in fulfilling business objectives. Mishra said, “Content marketing generates three times as many leads as outbound marketing. Given that every category has a number of players fighting for ‘the’ spot, relevancy and personalisation is what helps us break free from the clutter. For India, the rise of content marketing holds a string of opportunities for brands to initiate rewarding connections with meaningful messages.”

She pointed out that while consistently creating content in the long run is crucial, it’s also important to ensure the right quality of content to match the brand’s reputation and personality.

“We need to produce content in multiple formats suiting various platforms. Lastly, measuring content ROI and taking decisions to modify and continue accordingly ensures we get better results for our efforts,” Mishra said.

Last month, Godrej Consumer Products’ Cinthol launched its first-ever mini web series ‘Cinthol Alive Adventures’. It features social media influencers such as actress-turned-travel influencer Shenaz Treasurywala, motorcyclists Harish Kumar and Sathyaraj, photographers Siddhartha Joshi, Trishita Bhattacharya and Manali Jain.

These webisodes are a series of conversations with these travel influencers reminiscing their most adventure-filled experiences. The web series consists of three episodes that were released fortnightly on social media pages of Cinthol. Each episode has two of these influencers being paired together, to have a candid conversation about re-living their travel experiences, sharing their adventure stories, covering the tips and tricks they have picked up being on the road for years and sharing their favourite alive and awesome moments. The series is released as part of Cinthol Awesome Explorers — a travel community created by the brand — which brings together people who love travel and adventure.

The three web episodes:

It is mostly seen products in the personal care and beauty category associate with content that talks about beauty, skincare, etc., but Cinthol opted to associate with content that stands for adventure and life. Explaining the thought behind this content strategy, Mishra said, “This web series is about bringing the brand philosophy of Cinthol to life. While there is obviously a functional dimension to the brand, it has an adventurous side to it. It’s a philosophy, best summarised in the three words, ‘Alive is Awesome’. It’s about exploration and incredible experiences that make living worthwhile. The adventurous and refreshing elements of the brand are brought to life by the quirky content of this series and experiences shared by India’s topmost influencers and explorers. The format allows us to form a direct, personal connection with our audience, encouraging them to explore and be simply awesome.”

Cinthol may create more such content pieces in the future depending on the success of the web episodes. So far, the brand has garnered more than five million views in total along with a reach of over 12 million.

Explaining the thought behind the campaign, Mishra said, “While we have always built interesting content around exploration, during Covid-19, we came across a theme that resonated by consumers across—around nostalgia for their past holidays and travel stories. This sparked the idea of the Cinthol Alive Adventures where we decided to bring the influencers to share their past travels and encourage consumers to share theirs. On the lines of ‘To spark the excitement – though we can’t travel, we can always vicariously enjoy the past travels before we set sail on our next explorations soon’.”

Mishra emphasised that it is crucial to choose influencers that fit the brand seamlessly and could represent it authentically. Cinthol took over three months to decide which influencers to work with for the campaign. She added, “Influencer marketing may not be new in India but it has become the ideal way to connect with the audience in the new normal. Consumers have evolved and no longer trust advertisements as much as they trust influencers and user-generated content. Here, the association with the influencers as part of the web episodes is a strategic one and they are part of our travel community as well.”

Cinthol has created a first-of-its-kind travel community, which brings together people who love travel and adventure. In line with the brand philosophy, this community is called #CintholAwesomeExplorers. To kick-start the community, the brand announced #CintholAliveAdventures, a UGC digital campaign offering people a chance to relive past adventurous experiences and get rewarded with Virtual Reality (VR) headsets. People were encouraged to share videos or photos of their most alive adventures from the past using #CintholAliveAdventures. This initiative went live in October across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages of Cinthol and concluded in November. More than 740 entry-based content pieces were received from across India.

Many brands are turning into publishers themselves by creating content on their own platforms. Cinthol also launched its online community for travel enthusiasts. Does it mean that the brand also intends to become a publisher itself?

Mishra answered, “While building our own content platforms for brands gives us complete liberty and creative freedom, we are always looking to collaborate with others to enjoy their expertise and loyal follower base. The ideal mix is a healthy combination of both to churn out relevant, interesting content that caters to our audience.”

Quite a few other brands from the house of GCPL, such as Godrej Professional, HIT and GoodKnight, have already ventured into the content space and plan to utilise this space more. “The fact that content marketing caters to a vast diversity of tastes and preferences of audiences, including vernacular experiences, is quite luring as it will help us draw a bigger and wider audience base,” said Mishra.

Cinthol is also open to content collaborations with large scale and niche platforms and creators, given their content matches the brand proposition. Mishra said, “The benefit of partnering with content creators is that it allows us to share our brand message in an authentic and engaging way. Creators have built strong relationships with their fans which we respect and it’s interesting to use their channel as a means to promote our offerings. We are always open to collaborate and create new, exciting content with various platforms. It all depends on the right campaign, story and brand fit.”