Gulf Oil uses digital to stay top-of-mind for a longer period of time: Amit Gheji

Gulf Oil Lubricants is one of the top brands in India, known for its rich history and associations with the world of sports. Gulf Oil’s consistent marketing has resulted in strong brand awareness and usage of the Gulf Brand in India. The lubricant market is highly competitive. Being a low involvement category, brands have to be quick on their feet and must stay continuously connected with their audiences. The digital transformation has changed the equation with the end customers. Today, the role and power of digital has help helped brand Gulf Oil come closer and engage intensely with their business partners and customers.

The emphasis toward digitisation has helped Gulf Oil to stay relevant and deliver value to their strong customer base. The company has launched digitisation initiatives for distributors, retailers, mechanics, and truck drivers to stay strongly connected. Their flagship programme, the Garage Mitr App, is an excellent example of how they have created an ecosystem for Gulf Car and Bike stops by providing CRM tools to all the independent garages to have a better connection with the end customers.

In an exclusive conversation with Adgully, Amit Gheji, Head - Marketing, Gulf Oil Lubricants India, speaks about their digital initiatives and how they have leveraged digital to stay connected with their business partners and end customers.

The digital landscape has changed rapidly. How are you leveraging the power of digital with your customers, retailers and mechanics?

Yes, the digital landscape has evolved. There are now more platforms, mediums, and touch points than ever before that are providing chances to connect with the target audience on a personal level. We are using digitisation to create a digital ecosystem for our consumers, distributor, retailers, and mechanics by introducing digital solutions for each stream at Gulf Oil India. By doing so, we hope to acquire speed to market with real-time feedback, respond to market needs, react to competition and remain top-of-mind for our target audience.

We have already launched digitisation initiatives for distributors, retailers, mechanics, and truck drivers. Our flagship programme, the Garage Mitr App, is an excellent example of how we are working to create an ecosystem for Gulf Car and Bike stops (Gulf branded Independent workshops) by providing CRM tools to independent garages to have a better connect with end-customers.

Lubricants is a very low involvement category, especially among the end customers. How do you plan to leverage digital and educate your customers about your various product offerings?

Being in a low involvement category should not be an excuse for lack of innovation. Any category can be made exciting and engaging to consumers, as long as marketers and advertisers understand their consumers and have their lateral thinking caps on. We have extensively used digital to engage and educate our customers about our product offerings. But we also do it in the right context so that the consumers don’t feel like it’s an intrusion in their space.

Our digital marketing campaigns are sharply targeted towards a specific audience and it shows in the success metrics as we enjoy among the highest engagement rates on our social media handles across all industry players. Our engagement rates on other digital media also consistently beat industry benchmarks. This is possible because we educate our consumers about our product offerings via content/ marketing campaigns which are contextual, insightful and engaging.

What is the role of digital in your retailer loyalty program? How has it helped the brand Gulf Oil retain your retailers and widen your distribution and reach?

Digitisation has played a huge role in the retailer loyalty program. For our top retailers, we established Unnati, a retailer loyalty programme developed by our Trade Marketing team. The app ‘Unnati’ that resides on these top retailers’ smartphones allows them to see how much Gulf product they have purchased, what their monthly target is, and if they meet the target, then what rewards they can get. This app is installed on the phones of our big retailers. The retailer can take advantage of the various rewards after the monthly target is fulfilled. The rewards come in the form of vouchers that may be redeemed both via Instant Money Transfer and through Big Bazaar stores.

This has helped to strengthen our relationship with the retailers and made them more loyal and likely to keep buying our brand.

Marketing is a two-way conversation. What has been the response from your business partners, the retailers and mechanics for your digital initiatives? What are some of the promotional pushes you are using for them to actively participate in the digital initiative? 

The response so far has been amazing. Other than Unnati and Garage Mitr apps, we have an app called Masterscan for other mechanics to earn their incentives. We have fully eliminated the physical cash coupon structure for mechanics and replaced it with a digital payment mechanism across our ecosystem.

I believe that our continuous reward system for our distributors, retailers, and mechanics is the most significant factor in allowing our value chain to remain engaged in our digital ecosystem. This aids in the development of brand loyalty and trust among our network.

Have you created an app for all your business partners to stay engaged? What’s your engagement strategy to stay engaged with your end consumer?

Yes, we developed an app for our distributors, mechanics, retailers, and also Gulf car and bike stops in order to include every stakeholder in our digital ecosystem. Our engagement strategy at Gulf Oil is simple: we use digital to stay top-of-mind for a longer period of time and reach directly to customers and consumers.

One of the best examples is ‘Jamoora Tesan’, a mobile on-demand audio podcast for truckers that helps Gulf Oil to stay top-of-mind while they are on the road. Every week, Jamoora Tesan features 10 minutes of entertaining and educational content about truckers’ lives, truck maintenance, and financing, all with subtle Gulf Oil brand integration. Although the podcast’s impact on sales cannot be directly linked, CVO (commercial vehicle oil) has performed best for us as a category in the last two years, when mobility has been badly impacted.