The Hari Ghotra project is an exciting Jellyfish initiative we’re leveraging to demonstrate the power of our combined skills, experience and services in the digital marketing sector.
Hari Ghotra wanted to do more with her sideline business of running an Indian Cookery School. She loved the social element of these lessons, the sharing experience, the sheer enjoyment of cooking her favourite North Indian cuisine with people who loved this type of food.
Jellyfish CEO, Rob Pierre, knew that for Hari to really expand her business she would need to approach this challenge digitally. And this is where we came in. Because working together would not only help Hari but would also showcase the company’s full range of services to a wider audience.
Launching an online brand
So in May 2013, after a lot of hard work and delicious curries (all in the name of research), Hari Ghotra was launched online. A brand new style, new photography, and stunning videos were combined with colourful sections packed with inspirational content on how to cook her amazing recipes. Since then, Jellyfish have continually worked with Hari to build her online presence, user base, and social following, and refine and improve every element of the site.
And as her status has grown, she has drawn attention to her distinctive brand from other successful companies. We are very proud to say she has recently moved into her new role as the Executive Chef of Tamarind Kitchen. We feel this is an amazing achievement and one we are extremely happy to be part of.
By bringing together all our experience, all our divisions, departments and creativity, we wanted to produce, establish and grow a new online brand. We wanted to build up the eCommerce angle and eventually create a new digital celebrity in Hari herself.
SEO, content strategy & brand development
Through a solid content strategy, an inviting brand look and feel and effective search strategy, we created the number one destination for authentic Indian cooking online.
Building a warm, friendly and inviting brand was integral to succeeding online as we had to appeal to people who loved cooking Indian food, and to those who didn’t think they could do it.
Our research showed that more people are cooking than ever before, and a growing segment is doing this on their mobile, tablet and desktop devices in the kitchen. So we had to reach our market the way they wanted to be reached.
Plus, the brand identity, tone of voice and associated assets needed to complement Hari’s personality and show off her professionalism and expertise. So we created Brand Guidelines and Brand Tone of Voice to help define and explain who Hari was, what she stood for and how we were to communicate her brand.
Not everyone cooks authentic Indian food. Not everyone thinks they could even begin to try, so we made sure we connected with all our culinary demographics without talking up or down to anyone. So building a user-friendly, fully responsive website was crucial and we had to make it flexible enough to allow regular content updates as the site grew.
Website build & remarketing strategy
Our aim was sharing knowledge, by creating a presence on the landscape and being recognized as an authentic Indian cook. We built our website optimized for SEO and remarketed to those people who had hit the site via display advertising showing another recipe.
We created engaging content which was outreached to where we knew our target audience would be and used this to drive people to the site.
For Hari’s site, it’s been all about creating a huge bank of engaging, high-quality content. The photography and video team spent hundreds of hours creating beautiful visual assets to complement the website, and to use for additional promotional activity.
From a novice presenter who’d never been in front of a camera to a star who now oozes effortless personality and charm, Hari has come on quite a journey. (And she’s gone from making a Mango Chutney to learning the rules with Surrey Fire and Rescue!)
The key to understanding and connecting with our audience through SEO and Social was to build out accurate personas to reflect Hari’s market. We then created a calendar to ensure regular, targeted output and specific content themes. When it came to the content strategy itself, the team focused on how we could present Hari taking a twist on traditional Indian cooking, such as how to create an amazing Cockle Curry!
Hari Ghotra Curry Kits
Once the site had a steady flow of new content to nurture a solid user base, we began to look at how we could monetize the brand. And what could be better than taking our curries out to people so they could make them? So Hari Ghotra now sells Curry Kits - little boxes of hand-picked spices with cooking instructions and directions on how to follow her videos. Plus, Hari now gives her professional recommendations for some really lovely cooking equipment.
The Hari Ghotra brand continues to grow with more and more opportunities almost every week.
YouTube strategy
With all the assets we created for Hari, we are now focusing our efforts on building out our YouTube channel. As the world's 2nd largest search engine, YouTube is the natural platform for Hari to showcase her culinary skills, engage with her audience, and with YouTube live, Hari can interact with her followers and respond to real-time questions just as if they were in a cooking class. Advertising has been switched on for the channel as we continue to grow in subscriber base, and this certainly is a channel that we look forward to developing over the next few months.
Tamarind of Mayfair
In May 2015, the Hari Ghotra project took an unexpected twist. After seeing her website and watching Hari’s cooking videos, Peter Joseph, Head Chef at Tamarind of Mayfair, approached us to see if Hari would be the face of their new restaurants. And who could refuse an offer like that? So after months of training in the kitchen with Peter, Hari has is now officially executive chef at Tamarind Kitchen, a new chain of restaurants opening in central London in 2016.
Do we think it's a success?
From having no brand, content, assets or visibility we now have an amazing website, a distinctive brand, a loyal following and an average of 46,000 visits to the website monthly.
We have a Facebook following of 2,500 likes, and 2,700 Twitter followers as well as a host of celebrity fans on Instagram, including Jeff Brazier, Atul Kochhar and Madeleine Shaw.
So what does all this mean for Jellyfish? It shows our we can draw all our expertise together to work as one to make something pretty incredible. We can build a brand from scratch, build a data-driven marketing strategy and showcase our full breadth of services, as well as cook a pretty good curry!
- 9,000 YouTube subscribers
- 413% SEO visibility increase over 2 years
- 70,000 average website vists a month
