2018 will be an important year for us: Saurabh Garg, NoBroker.com

NoBroker.com, touted as the world’s largest ‘peer-to-peer’ real estate portal, recently rolled out its first-ever TVC. The 20-second ad is aimed at highlighting NoBroker.com’s differentiated brand proposition of leveraging cutting-edge technology to eliminate brokers and middlemen from the property supply chain, and make it extremely easy and hassle-free for home owners putting their properties up for rent/sale. 

The TVC targets home owners, a large percentage of whom are 45+ and not very active online. That’s why TV has been chosen as a medium, especially using the vernacular channels in the cities they operate in, to reach these home owners effectively and at low cost. 

Conceptualised and created by Circus Elephants, a 360-degree digital content agency specialising in creative content development and social media, the entire campaign is budgeted for Rs 2.5 crore. DDB Mudra Max is the media agency on record. 

The video starts with a property owner talking about the hassles of enlisting a property with a traditional broker, before going on to explain how NoBroker.com can address these challenges and make property discovery extremely convenient and hassle-free. The TVC has been launched in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Chennai and is delivered through regional news, movies and general entertainment channels to its target audiences. 

In a quick chat with Adgully, Saurabh Garg, Co-founder, NoBroker.com, shares the idea behind the first TVC, the marketing strategy, go-to-market plans and more. Excerpts: 

What was the idea behind the first TVC?
If we look at the customer’s spectrum, we have two sets of customers which include owners and buyers. These are very distinct target groups and to reach these TGs separately with the same medium becomes extremely difficult. If you look at online penetration in India, it is very low for people above 40 years. They are not used to Google and social media and that’s the reason why we decided to go with the TVC for reaching out to these categories. 

The message that we wanted to convey via this TVC was that the middleman adds very little value and you can do much more by doing it yourself. You don’t require any middleman or broker. Even the tagline says that we do it faster, easier and save money as well. 

What is the marketing strategy involved?
Recently, we launched our new location in Gurugram and we aim to go deeper in these markets. We have targeted these cities and are using a mix of news, regional channels and regional GECs to reach out to the masses. These are the marketing mix that we have used to reach the audiences. 

What was the creative brief given to the agency?
The creative brief that was given to the agency was to create the TVC in a creative way and in my view, the tagline: “Jaldi Tenants Paae Brokerage bhi bachae” depicts it very well. Secondly, we wanted to convey this message particularly to the owners, who still think that things will be done more easily if they opt for brokers. Through this campaign we wanted to deliver the message that with no brokerage involved, one could do things easily and quickly. Thus, if we see the TVC, veteran actor Shishir Sharma gives all the details regarding the portal. 

What are the go-to-market plans for NoBroker?
For this campaign, we had budget of Rs 2.5 crore. Going forward, our main focus is to go deeper in these existing cities because real estate is a game where you need to have a lot of suppliers. As I said earlier, we recently expanded our business to Gurugram and are planning to stretch it to the NCR region. Going forward, we will be a mix of what we are doing – online marketing plus mix of ATL and BTL. 

How was 2017 for NoBroker?
2017 has been a very interesting year. Initially, we saw the effects of demonetisation, which helped us. Brokers mostly deal in cash, but being an organised firm, we were quite benefitted during that time as we deal in digital transactions. It was a stable period for us during that time. 

What are your expectations from 2018?
2018 will be an important year for us. We will enter new geography with our new operation network in NCR and that would be quite interesting and encouraging. 

Campaign credits: 

Creative agency: Circus Elephants

Writer & Creative Director: Durgesh Tanna

Business Director: Ritesh Shastri

Associate Vice President (Brand Solutions, Bangalore): Bishwajeet Mishra

Creative Producer: Shefali Shrivastava

Assistant Producer: Vijay Kadam

Client Servicing: Manish Bhalerao

Director: Rishabh Shrivastava

Media buying agency: DDB Mudra Max