India is now one of the largest markets for automobiles in the world. Indian citizens have shunned the habit of sticking to the same old trusted car brands, they are more than willing to explore fresh models. Young millennials are open to buying the latest and expensive models. Every other day a new company is launching their car models here. Hence, a lot of automobile brands are relying on innovative strategies to catch the buyer’s attention. Innovative marketing strategies act as the triumph cards in this case. Digital campaigns, thought-provoking advertisements, and sometimes witty tag-lines are being used to hook the potential customers. You may see many celebrities acting as brand ambassador and models in these ad campaigns. Here are some latest examples where the companies ditched the tried and tested rules for newer ideas:
Tata Motors
The Indian global brand Tata motors used innovative ways in more than one cases to make a mark:
Truck Racing
The T1 Prima Racing was originally a promotional campaign organised by Tata Motors to promote its truck brands. Commercial vehicles are still a little bit less noticed by a major part of Indians. Truck driving is commonly viewed as a lower-class job. This company used this prestigious truck racing event to generate a buzz about their HMVs and introduced us to the world of truck racing. It worked so well that the sales splurged up. People went gaga over their truck models and the racing contest also. The event is still going on since 2014 in the international Buddh Racing Circuit with a steady audience.
World Famous Brand Ambassador and Web Series
To get the attention of young Indians, Tata Motors appointed Football star Lionel Messi as their brand ambassador for Tata Tiago. The soccer fanatics got hooked up with the Messi magic. Besides that, a five-episode long web series storytelling the backdrop of the famous brand was also aired. Nevertheless, Tiago became the prime model of the next generation Tata motors. The advertisement and web series got millions of organic views. As a result, Tata Motors saw a sharp hike in their Tiago sales.
Emotional Connect
Tata Motors encashed on the emotional connect and reaped the benefits accordingly. Their tagline for Tata Ace was “Teen chakke mehnat k ek Izzat ka”. That literally means three wheels of hard work and one imaginary extra wheel of pride. It was aimed to encourage Indian young people to take the hard and risky route to self-independence. Many people felt accord with the emotion stroking marketing campaign and started their own ventures. The sales have since gone up for this three-wheeled commercial vehicle.
Maruti Suzuki
Maruti Suzuki launched their model NEXA S-Cross with one innovative twist. They wanted to explain that the car was able to give a smooth ride in both rough terrains and city roads. For this purpose, the company came up with a new commercial. In this commercial where a normal office going person starts for his workplace from his farmhouse with animals and livestock. The hashtag was “Livethecrossoverlife”. In their YouTube banner, Suzuki became more aggressive in their marketing efforts and dared the viewers to set off on an adventurous trip. Whenever some user allowed YouTube to access their locations, they were suggested a new off route for a new destination by Suzuki. More than 100 locations were searched manually and uploaded to the system. This advertisement became very popular. The YouTube channel of Nexa got 200% more traffic and an additional 60 million impressions. The end result was epic and Suzuki reported sales of nearly 2500 models of Nexa S-Cross after the campaign.
Mahindra and Mahindra
The most well-known tagline of Mahindra and Mahindra is “Live Young, Live Free”. This is used for the UV models of Mahindra. Mahindra claims that these SUVs, XUV, KUV, Bolero, Scorpio models are adaptable for all types of road. So, the campaign displayed the story of an outing of a group of friends. In addition to this, Mahindra also organized escapades and group adventure vacations. Till now they have arranged 30 events of trips from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and even Nepal and Bhutan. Young Indians became so hooked up that the training academy built by Mahindra saw a huge footfall. The Royal Escapades and other paid events are now considered a great success. It generally starts from 26th December every year with multiple teams comprising of two members participating in it. After that, Mahindra has seen a huge spurt in the relevant sales figures.
More and more automobile brands are now adopting the trend of innovative marketing. It is clear that the era of innovative marketing has just started. India is warming up to these innovative marketing campaigns and from the early signs, one may realize that these campaigns are yielding great results for the automobile brands.
