Much like his restaurant’s signature “chizzas” or pizzas with an Asian twist, Sohrab Sitaram managed to rustle up loyalty amongst families for Chi Kitchen and Bar, his Delhi-based pan-Asian restaurant. But he knew to survive in a competitive, cluttered market like an Oriental cuisine restaurant in Delhi, he needed to carve out a slice of India’s huge GenY population. This demographic profile ate out more often and was an important ingredient for growing his business. But with a multitude of eating options available, and the subsequent advertising overload, Sitaram knew grabbing and holding the internet generation’s attention would be a challenge. Could Sitaram craft a smart social media campaign to stir up the pot? Could his company create brand awareness in an undifferentiated market and attract the youth at the same time? 

The backstory

The Restaurateur
In 2001, Sohrab Sitaram opened 'No Escape', his first restaurant bar in Delhi’s Connaught Place, after five years of setting up and managing restaurants for Taj Hotel properties across the country. “I had learnt enough about restaurants in those years to know I could start a couple of mine soon,” says the Institute of Hotel Management, Aurangabad graduate. True to his word, in the next few years, he set up a lounge bar, a seafood lounge and a chain of Italian restaurants, all of which did quite well. Within a few years, he sold his stake in these ventures to start up again, this time to create restaurant “brands”. Through 2002 to 2006, he set up three more restaurants, including Chi Kitchen and Bar, a casual-style pan-Asian restaurant. Designed to look like a dining room, with tables placed close to an open kitchen, Chi (which means positive energy), offers a wide range of Asian delights. Today, the restaurant has two company-owned outlets in Delhi with total sales of just under Rs5 crore a year. Its future plans are ambitious—to expand to 30 outlets in the next three years. To get there, Sohrab understands his growth strategy must focus on the largest segment of India’s population. 

The Problem

Tempting GenY   

In February 2012, Brandlogist launched a Twitter campaign called #spreadingchi to help Sitaram get the young demographic that he was hoping to attract to Chi.

Operating in the crowded pan-Asian food segment, Chi required a campaign that could differentiate it enough from others to attract a significantly higher number of young customers to the restaurant. “Earlier, our target segment was families, and that worked well for us, but considering our growth plans for the next three years, we wanted to establish a connect with the youth,” explains Sitaram. What better place to target GenY than social media where a lot of their conversations take place? Now Sitaram’s kitchens might be able to whip up delicacies, but he knew his understanding of social media (for he believed there was more to it than just updating your restaurant’s Facebook and Twitter page) needed to be garnished. So, instead of attempting it in-house, Sitaram enlisted Brandlogist, a branding consultancy to design and implement a campaign for Chi.

The Next Steps

Spreading Positive Energy 
In February 2012, Brandlogist launched a Twitter campaign called #spreadingchi. Taking the core value of the brand—spreading positive energy or happiness—the team identified potential customers based in Delhi on Twitter who were tweeting about being “hungry”, “angry”, “sad”or “bored” and replied to them with funny quotes, videos, photos or invited them to dine at Chi. Once the conversations were initiated, they tried to find out what dishes on the Chi menu were people’s favourites. And in the next leg of the campaign, 30-80 per cent discounts on these were offered. But not just that, the team also conversed with food connoisseurs and popular bloggers (who had more than 3,000 Twitter followers) to keep the conversations around Chi alive.

This campaign was an experiment for us to see whether social media works as a marketing tool or whether it’s just a fad.”- Sohrab Sitaram

The Aftermath 

Grabbing attention  
The #spreadingchi campaign went on for 10 days. Of the almost 400 tweeple the team had managed to engage in conversation, about 96 per cent responded with happier tweets with their day made, thus creating a positive buzz around the brand. “But several of these 400 people had more than 3,000 followers each, which signifies that the campaign reached a much larger potential customer base in just 10 days,” explains Saurabh Parmar, CEO and founder, Brandlogist. Chi is a restaurant with a very loyal fan following, he adds, and what the campaign did is grab attention of many new prospective customers who’d probably never heard of the restaurant. In fact, Sitaram reports a recent influx of school kids celebrating birthdays in his restaurant and an almost 30 per cent increase in the number of GenY customers since the campaign’s launch in February.  

The Takeaway

Social media is the flavour for the future too 
Sitaram says the campaign achieved what it had sought out to do—differentiate Chi as a unique brand in an otherwise undifferentiated market. More importantly, it demystified the social media buzz for him. “This campaign was an experiment for us to see whether social media works as a marketing tool or whether it’s just a fad,” he says. With the medium’s wide reach, the results have been more than encouraging.“The restaurant business is a word of mouth business and with this medium, you are in a position to chat with everybody. You know what is being talked about your product everyday. Traditionally, you come to know of this through comment cards which normally people don’t fill but on social media, people are not hesitant to write, and that helps us identify the problems faster and business decisions take less time,” he says.