Being Aggressively Customer-Focused

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While she agrees one cannot ignore cricket and Bollywood in India, Delna Avari, Head – Marketing Communication & Services, Tata Motors, talks about the unconventional route the brand has chosen for this World Cup and how marketing at Tata Motors has changed after the Horizonext strategy

BY SALONI DUTTA

Q] How has communication changed since the Horizonext strategy?

Horizonext is an aggressively customer-focused strategy and also about the internal transformation of the organization. We laid out a clear plan that every year we will introduce two new products until 2020.Each of those products will be governed by the overarching philosophy of Horizonext. Zest and Bolt were the first two products that came out under this. We looked at the entire approach of the launch in phases. Right from building awareness of what we wanted to do as a philosophy, to what these products stood for and even in the product we were clear in saying that we are about Design, Drive and Connect. It was about getting our message out to the consumer saying that we are changing and what we are bringing to you is different. We gave clear proof points of what we were doing differently.

Q] How did this reflect in the launch of Bolt and Zest?

It has been a year-long launch which started from unveiling it to the press at the Auto-Expo last year and then building digital awareness. We used Digital because it was about user awareness and connecting with the consumer. The ‘Zest for Stardom’ content was on-air and used celebrities within IIFA like Ranveer Singh, Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali, Vir Das and more. At that time it was just about getting the brands out there and getting a conversation going and letting people understand that something is changing about Tata Motors. Once we were closer to the launch, we started working on the pre-launch of Zest in a different manner by giving a lot of proof points. We also started using conventional media. We needed to build a lot of experiences as well. Zest has been the largest on-ground initiative that any auto company has ever undertaken. It was 184 events in 51 days across 37 cities.

We took learnings from Zest into the next product, Bolt. With Bolt we didn’t do test drives in malls, but used it to generate interest and drive showroom walk-ins. A small innovation we did there was having bands with bar codes which consumers picked at an activation and it helped us track a consumer journey and we incentivized it by offering prizes.

This is how the whole strategy worked out, we mapped our consumers or our prospect journey in terms of where to catch them if the conversation has started, a year earlier in the digital space, to bringing it into conventional media where we gave proof points and an opportunity to interact with the product and drive it; build the confidence during the first launch and for the second launch we didn’t need to do that and moved back to driving the consumer into the showroom.

Q] How did you use experiential marketing to promote your new petrol engine, Revotron?

It’s interesting that not enough of experiential marketing happens with passenger cars as compared to commercial vehicles and whatever happens is conventional. We decided to turn the entire thing on its head. We are not very strong in petrol, so when we launched Revotron, we used TV and got Narain Karthikeyan to endorse the engine. We highlighted its features in Print. The unique thing we did was to create Revotron labs. These lab setups did not have a physical engine; everything was done using technology and large LED screens. We had a small closed chamber with the Zest seat where one could hear how the engine would sound in the different modes of multi drive. We used gaming too as an engagement tool as it is picking up, not probably with the buying audience but definitely with influencers. The people to help customers at the event were dressed in lab-coats and called geeks and they spoke about the engine in a fun and engaging manner. The Revotron lab was our first experience zone. Then we did the Zest studio which is the largest activation to have happened, followed by the Bolt arena which had people playing football.

There are different types of consumers at these engagements. From hard core car junkies to someone who wants to understand the technology, to someone who wants to know the design philosophy. Over the last 15-18 months, the big change has been in understanding how we can aim our communication at one person, while speaking mass. Every interaction gave us more information that fed into the next experience zone that we did.

Q] How is the brand’s target group positioning changing with the Horizonext strategy?

As a company we have not always been good with talking to women, and haven’t particularly understood how she is influencing the buying decision. Our brand needs to do a lot more in terms of talking with the younger audience who is probably buying their first car. It’s a journey and we have taken that step with Zest and Bolt. We have been working on becoming relevant to them and move into their consideration set.

Q] How do you plan your media mix for different brands at Tata Motors?

We take a clear financial value based portfolio strategy while deciding the media mix as the budget is finite for the 14 brands, and two more are added every year. We identify brands which will lead the brand strategy change and brands which would work in a conventional space i.e. direct interaction with the consumer. For commercial consumers who buy products like Sumo, Indica, Indigo, a key account management strategy would work. Then we have the big brands, the launches, and there we divide the money based on what the initial objectives are and the phases. The mainstay is traditional media and TV is the most cost effective. There is a lot of TV in the launch phase to build awareness. Print is equally important to bring out the features. PR plays an important role as it gets the brand a lot of push from a marketing bandwidth point of view. Then there is new media, Digital and I am separating mobile more and more out of it. Digital includes lead generation, social media, SEO and SEM. We spend about 14-15% of our budget on Digital. For Bolt we innovated around mobile as a medium. I did a study on Bolt and 50% of the people said they knew everything before coming to the showroom. That tells us that there is a lot of work that we have to do in that space, so we will use mobile to build awareness quickly and at a low cost.

Q] What would be basic to the tenet of marketing at Tata Motors?

Marketing is an ever evolving function, there are certain things which are the mainstay like the conventional media and then you have an evolving consumer and the way they are capturing information is constantly changing. Today marketing is about dealing on one hand with this evolving, digital, social, mobile customer, and on the other side looking at a conventional way of talking to them. We have a very holistic approach to it, we have a clear understanding that we will have to decide where we spend our monies, how we spend it, what is the kind of messaging, and we understand that the consumer is different.

There is a lot of cautious optimism in the market. The market has been under tremendous strain in the last couple of years, I don’t think we have seen the kind of numbers and growth that we all expected or would have liked to see, there is pressure on this sector and we haven’t seen a big jump. What we have seen however is that every time someone has launched something new, there is excitement. A large part of growth is coming from new launches or from creating new segments, like the compact SUV segment. This pioneering streak that we have is not just about launching a product but also understanding the consumer and how we can offer unique or different products.

Q] What are your plans for advertising around the World Cup?

We have taken an unconventional route and chosen the audience in the Digital space and on Doordarshan. It is about getting the best bang for your buck. Properties like these are getting extremely expensive with many sponsors hopping on-board, and by the end of it there is hardly any inventory left and what is available is extremely expensive. It is no doubt very effective in reach, but is it effective in ROI? My digital medium is seeing a phenomenally good performance and I am seeing equally good performance on Doordarshan because that is allowing me to reach a different audience that I have been wanting to talk to. We have done an intelligent buy on this and have continued to support our brands in other spaces like GECs, movies, etc. We are still evaluating our plans for IPL this year, last year we did a last minute buy. You cannot ignore cricket and Bollywood in India.

ABOUT THE BRAND

Tata Motors Limited is India’s largest automobile company, with consolidated revenues of $38.9 billionin 2013-14. The company’s manufacturing base in India is spread across Jamshedpur, Pune, Lucknow,Pantnagar, Sanand and Dharwad. The company’s dealership, sales, services and spare parts network comprises over 6,600 touch points, across the world. Through subsidiaries and associate companies, Tata Motors has operations in the UK, South Korea, Thailand, South Africa and Indonesia. Among them is Jaguar Land Rover, acquired in 2008.

MARKETING TIP

Marketing is as much a science as an art, and it’s about making the two work together.

CMO FILE

DelnaAvari started her career at Tata Administrative Services as a Manager in 2001. She then moved to the role of Marketing Manager (LCV) at Tata Motors. Over the years, she has held various leadership roles within the company. She assumed her current role in August 2013.Avari’s experience spans India, Europe and ASEAN, managing relationships with over 12 nationalities. She has a strong business leadership background through experiences in setting up Greenfield projects, turning around weak operations and exiting certain markets. As a Fulbright Fellow and TAS member, Avarihas sought and been accorded several opportunities to push her limits, intellectually and in her career.

CREATIVE AGENCY:

Zest & Bolt: FCB Ulka

Nano: Rediffusion Y&R

Utility Vehicles: Ogilvy& Mather

MEDIA AGENCY: Lodestar

SOCIAL &DIGITAL MEDIA AGENCY:

For creative: Digitas LBI

Media buying: Convonix

BTL/ACTIVATION AGENCY:

Zest &Revotron:Wizcraft

Bolt:Showbiz &Wizcraft

PR AGENCY:Rediffusion/Edelman