It seems you’re either a red tractor person or a green… and Delhi publisher Jagran New Media is keen that Indian farmers see red.
A branded content campaign for Mahindra presents its central character as the proud owner of an XP Plus tractor, encouraging his audience to make informed decisions rather than relying only on word of mouth.
In an INMA ‘innovative advertising solutions’ blog, Priyanka Sharma explains the video-based campaign’s role in promoting agricultural mechanisation as the future of farming.
The ‘Aloo Ke Ustaad’ campaign was developed to help client Mahindra reach new age farmers who are willing to adopt new farming techniques, “farmers who want to gain more knowledge about the latest advancements in the field of agriculture and make a mark by moving toward a new era of agricultural mechanization,” she says.
The videos were intended to answer farmers’ questions about new technologies and processes. “We also wanted to educate those farmers who are still apprehensive about mechanisation in farm fields. We wanted to help them understand how the latest technology and processes in place in agriculture have become a lot easier to use and navigate.”
Whether it is tilling, mowing, sowing or any other task, what used to take weeks can now be wrapped up in a day or two. In addition to making it faster to complete agricultural tasks with high productivity, the technology used in tractors can do so much more.
“We wanted to communicate this with ‘Aloo Ke Ustaad’,” she says. “In the campaign, we created a character who is a potato farmer equipped with all the new technology available in the market for farming.
“This character is also shown to be a proud owner of a Mahindra XP Plus tractor.”
Sharma says ‘Aloo Ke Ustaad’ helped farmers learn and introduce them to the latest advanced technologies available to help with every aspect of farming. “The tricky part was to make sure we didn’t become preachy with our content, because a farmer doesn’t need to know how to farm.”
As a result, the campaign introduced them only to newer, advanced technologies. “Because they don’t have enough knowledge about these advancements in the field of farming, they are unable to adopt modern technologies. This is where Mahindra wanted to make a difference,” she says.
Another tricky part was that while there is some level of mechanisation in the field of farming, it is still largely skewed toward only land preparation processes. For many other operations, simple processes are being used by small farmers. This is where ‘Aloo Ke Ustaad’ helped fill the gap of unawareness about advanced technology and processes and how they can be used on different farm sizes and for various crops and purposes.
With the campaign intended to reach farmers predominantly in the potato farming dominant regions, which is in the north of India, Jagran was the perfect platform. Jagran has a strong foothold in the Hindi-speaking market, especially Uttar Pradesh, where 24 per cent of the user traffic comes from. This made it the perfect and most-effective platform to reach the right audience with content relevant to them.
The campaign had three main objectives:
-To position Mahindra XP Plus and its hydraulics for precision farming as the best helping hand on the farm;
-To address the audience’s concerns and bust any myths they may have regarding potato precision farming; and
-To encourage the audience to make a buying decision based on their understanding instead of just relying on word of mouth.
“To fulfill all these objectives, we decided to plan a digital lead campaign which divided into two phases. We created a content hub (microsite) on Jagran for six months (November 2020-April 2021); and we made sure the duration of the campaign overlapped with the actual potato farming season so the content remained relevant to users.”
In the first phase of the campaign, articles focussed on the A-to-Z of potato planting, soil preparation, precision farming and its benefits, the right tractors to use, equipment and technologies.
In the second phase of the campaign, video content was created for users, backed by experts. The first, called A.K. Ustaad, was a light-hearted three-part video series focussed on several issues, concerns, and questions related to different stages of potato farming, how precision farming can help maximise profits and how the right hydraulics make all the difference.
The second video series was two parts and called Farmer Sang Fridays. In it, farming experts answered questions and responded to doubts and apprehension regarding the mechanisation and adoption of new advanced processes and technology. The series enabled an exchange of thoughts, ideas, and information to create a reliable ecosystem for farmers.
All the content created was promoted on the microsite and Jagran’s social platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Jagran TV, and Instagram.
Sharma says the campaign reached 19.59 million people, with 1.44 million video views and 550,478 pageviews during the six-month campaign.