Chaayos ramps up ad spends for rebranding, bets on OOH for the first time

From its start in 2012, Chaayos has expanded from developing chai cafe chains to personalising chai in over 80 thousand different ways while also leveraging deep tech. Further, with its new campaign #RelaxwithChaayos, it is now positioning itself as the ultimate chai break joint. The integrated campaign plans to redefine and take the daily ritual of “Chai Break” to the next level.

Watch the BuzzInContent Awards 2021 promo:

BestMediaInfo.com caught up with Raghav Verma, Co-founder of Chaayos, to understand the brand’s marketing strategies and what went behind the campaign.

The brand has not only ramped up its marketing spends for the rebranding, but is also spending up to 80% of its total spends on digital, and the rest on OOH for the first time.

“Our marketing budget has been very small and we are going to ramp it up a little bit right now because of the winters which is our core season, and for the campaign. 70 to 80% of the total spends are for digital only. Our customers are young and are primarily on digital mediums. We have done OOH kind of integrations in those locations which are close to our cafes, to recreate the top of mind recall at the point of sale,” Verma said.

The new brand campaign aims to position Chaayos as a sensorial place where tea aficionados and customers can visit, unwind, relax and walk out fully refreshed, ready to take on the rest of the day. More than a place to work out of or have investor meetings, Chaayos wants to be a place where people come to chill, to take away the physical and mental pain caused by work stress, FOMO, screens, etc with a sip of the warm cup of “Meri wali chai”.

That is the sole strategy of the brand, to be a click away from a customer to give them their well-deserved ‘chai break’ whenever and wherever they want it.

Motherland provided strategic directions behind the rebranding exercise "Relax" and Wondrlab drove the creative mandate of the integrated campaign. He shared that Motherland also worked on the brand strategy, which culminated with ‘Chai+snack= relax’.

“The brief was pretty simple, we wanted to bring to life the whole concept of ‘relax’ with some filmy brand, very simple and easy to explain brand visibility outside of the cafe and inside of the cafe as well. We have been able to give a good first shot at explaining what is relaxing and what is that emotion,” he said.

Discussing the brand’s overall marketing strategy, Verma shared that it has been product and experience led.

“We've not really done a lot of marketing, we've not had the need to because our customers create a lot of positive vibes around us by word of mouth marketing, we run a referral programme. Customers who end up trying us out end up becoming very high repeat customers. For us repeat customer visits is 3.8 times a month on average, which is much higher than any of the other food brands out there. We've been able to get a very high repeat and very strong word of mouth marketing from our existing customers, and it's been only on the basis of the experience and the products that we've been able to scale up so far, that's going to be our approach going forward as well,” he said.

The brand has also explored influencer marketing in the past, which according to Verma worked quite well for the brand and going forward, it will keep investing in the same.

Talking about the journey of the brand, he said, “We have come so far, from hearing on day one that why would anybody come to a Chaayos to have a cup of ‘chai’ when it's so easily available at home and why would anybody pay for it- to now having 140 stores across the country. It's been a very interesting journey of us having to prove to ourselves and also establish the kind of customer behaviour that tea can be consumed out of home.”

Other than chai, food too is very important to Chaayos- all those things that go very well with a cup of chai. 91.5% of its customers have chai and snacks together.

Sharing more on the objectives behind the rebranding, he said, “We have always been observing customer behaviour and realised that it's actually the whole experience of chai with some snacks. Also, it is that chai break, where customers can refresh themselves, they can unwind, and they can feel relaxed. That's how we began to put that into a purpose and a positioning, which is chai plus snacks gives you that relaxation. It's actually what makes us very unique compared to any other coffee cafe, or any other QSR brand. It's not just the chai, it's not just the snack but put together with the experience, which helps our customers relax and also, we will leverage technology to be able to create those experiences better. We are going to be doing a lot of changes to the customer journey inside the cafes.”

The new Chaayos campaign will run from December to January.

The brand started the year with close to 90 cafes and now currently has 140. By the end of this financial year, it aims to open a total 175 cafes.

Verma said, “We've seen good growth and have been able to go past our pre-Covid best levels and we are growing very strongly. D2C and home delivery both have been growing very strongly. They've been the fastest growing for us and the majority of the revenue is coming from offline cafes. Our largest and oldest market in Delhi- NCR, Mumbai too is now growing well along with Bangalore and Pune.”

Other than guaranteed 25 minutes delivery, which has worked well for the brand, it is also exploring other segments.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com