At the Auto Expo that ended in Delhi on Wednesday, this was acknowledged in various forms at the stands of carmakers such as Maruti, Hyundai Motor India Ltd and BMW India Pvt. Ltd.The Maruti pavilion allowed visitors to register a Facebook “like” by using fingerprint IDs.Hyundai used a “buzz” card rather than a fingerprint to get instant feedback. Visitors could also upload technical specifications to their Facebook pages and share them with friends in real time.

BMW India registered visitors with a connect card that could exchange information with their Facebook pages when tapped against an AppleiPad attached to each model on display.Apart from data on the car, users could get their photos shot and uploaded on Facebook immediately.“It’s a very cost-effective tool,”?said Christian Saffer, director, marketing, BMW India. “It’s much cheaper than placing an advertisement in a newspaper.”

For volume car makers such as Maruti and Hyundai, the process creates a database of potential customers. The method is more effective than a traditional survey, with visitors able to express themselves better.
“Social media is a very engaging medium,” said Shashank Srivastava, chief general manager, Maruti. “It helps get feedback on both products and services and in making a reputation online.”For Hyundai, social media is critical because it targets younger people.“We have a lot of young customers and most are hooked to the social media in some way or the other,”?said Arvind Saxena, director, sales and marketing, Hyundai. “It’s important that we talk in their language to connect with them.”

Moreover, social media has a multiplier effect when it comes to the dissemination of information, he said.Companies have been raising the amount of money they spend on the medium. Maruti spent 8% of its total Rs.200 crore advertising and marketing budget on digital media in the year ended March 2011.This percentage?has been doubling each year and is expected to be 16% by the end of the current fiscal year, Srivastava said.

Hyundai’s expenditure on the medium has gone up to 8% from 2-3% three years ago. “Compared to advanced markets like the UK, we as a country are still not very digitized, but the direction is very clear,” Srivastava said.According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India, the number of Internet users crossed 100 million in late 2011, thanks in part to the increasing sales of smartphones. Facebook currently has 38 million users in India.Automobiles are a high-involvement product category and with buyers belonging to the upper-income, Net-savvy segment, the use of digital media will rise further, said Pradeep Saxena, executive director, TNS Automotive, a market research and sales forecasting firm.

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Source: www.livemint.com 11/1/12

BMW’s “studio” in New Delhi invites potential customers to “Enrich yourself with comprehensive information on BMW products and services and stop by today to view our newest car on display.”Mercedes-Benz has a “star lounge” at New Delhi’s Indira Ghandi airport will a gull-wing car on display and plenty of branded trinkets and clothing on sale.

Lower down the price range, Ford has been operating temporary cafés in shopping malls since April. Fiat is set to follow next month, opening cafés in New Delhi and Pune in conjunction with Lavazza, offering Italian coffee and food and complete with a cultural space for art exhibitions and film shows.“Luxury car selling is about selling a lifestyle, and airports are the right points as icons of lifestyles for our customers,” said Debashis Mitra, sales and marketing director at Mercedes-Benz India. Existing car owners get access to the Mercedes star lounge by entering their car registration number. Others can pay to experience the hospitality.

Meanwhile at Ford’s cafés, customers can sip coffee and chew sandwiches while experiencing the company’s technology.“Realising that the Fiesta is an all-round expansion of the personality of the young and upwardly mobile customer with its new connectivity and entertainment features, Ford introduced a unique and interactive ‘Fiesta Café’ at its reveal pavilion,” Ford explained.

But setting up these non-selling showrooms is expensive. Mercedes’ lounge cost 25m rupees ($550,000) – raising the question of what sales it will generate. Analysts say it is hard to tell but reckon the project can’t be that successful, noting that many such spaces are temporary or are shutting down – although Ford stressed it had always planned its cafés as a temporary exercise.Mercedes, however, is planning to expand its presence across the country’s airports over the next two years, Mitra told beyondbrics.Whether the cafe strategy will help it win over clients from BMW, its arch rival, remains to be seen.

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Source: FT 8-8-11

UK marketing director Martin Moll, who is coming up to a year in the post, says this is a formula that continues to work for Honda. However, he emphasises that the company is devising new ideas about how to communicate with today’s consumers – and they do not always focus on the person who is ready to buy.“It is not about the product sale here and now,” he says. “It is done in a way that customers believe they are a part of something, as opposed to being sold something.” He summarises this approach as: “Don’t advertise at me, engage with me.”

This is a guiding principle of Honda’s strategy for its latest Jazz model, a campaign for which launched last week. The television ad, which Moll describes as similar in style to a Pixar animated film, prompts viewers to download a free iPhone app, which uses audio recognition software to make the characters in the ad “jump” from the TV to the handset.

Rather than driving sales of the Jazz, Honda wants to get people talking and thinking about the brand, creating positive sentiments that can be tapped into at any time. It is a philosophy that will not only drive Honda’s advertising strategy, but is part of a wider engagement focus for the brand.

Moll says: “Marketing [spend is] to increase year on year with a view to helping people understand that not everything you do in marketing is about selling products today.“Not every customer is in the market to buy right now. You could be selling to some customers in two or three years time, but the messaging and the communication needs to start now.”The payback for the current marketing investment is not expected to come for another 24 or 36 months. Moll says the strategy will focus on the experiences of customers and potential customers, from their first visit to its website through to purchase, servicing and beyond.These touchpoints will reach across all of Honda’s business areas, but will be tailored to individual circumstances because Moll says: “The retail experience of a farmer buying an all-terrain vehicle and a city dweller buying a Jazz is massively different.”

Creating a long-term engagement strategy should help the car maker when things go wrong with a product. Honda believes that it can reaffirm the bond with the customer if repairs are carried out fast, faults are fixed first time and the customer’s expectations are exceeded.Of course, the first priority is to prevent this from arising by making a reliable product. This is at the expense of competing on price, Moll admits. “For us, it is the obsession with making the highly engineered product, the cost base for which is actually quite expensive. Honda products are generally more expensive because of that. Therefore, our main focus globally is customer satisfaction.”On this measure, Honda appears to have been achieving at least some of its aims. In last year’s annual UK vehicle ownership satisfaction study by JD Power, Honda ranks second to Lexus among car marques overall, while the Honda Jazz tops the ’supermini’ category – a position it has held since the class was introduced to the survey in 2004. Meanwhile, Honda’s Accord, CR-V and Civic models are first, third and fourth in their respective classes.Having met these benchmarks, Moll says his department has earned a degree of latitude from the UK board in terms of budgets. With marketing objectives commercially aligned, he claims to be better able to address the question that he believes to be at the heart of guiding a successful strategy.

“How do we make sure it is consumer-focused, not budget-led? I am comfortable with a level of expenditure, even if it breaks the boundaries of the budget, if I believe the activity will generate the consumer interest, the desire and therefore demand for the product. That is self-fulfilling because that will generate the revenues to offset the cost of the investment.”

His final point is perhaps the most important from the perspective of the corporate dynamic within Honda. While the manufacturer wants to get emotional responses from consumers rather than an immediate sales boost, it is with the expectation of an eventual – and demonstrable – return in terms of incremental revenues. “Marketing is about understanding the commerciality of the whole business,” says Moll.

Moll has been immersed in Honda’s business methods for the past 15 years and was therefore well placed to take on the role of marketing director that was created in June 2010, when Honda’s UK team was reshuffled and several marketers moved to the European office.

This is unlikely to have a huge effect on Honda’s marketing in the UK, according to Moll. Although the company’s marketing is developed on a pan-European basis, Honda would never opt for “something that is generic as the best compromise across all markets”. That would be “a catastrophe” for the UK, which provides double the sales volumes of the next biggest market in Europe, he explains.

Moll adds: “When we are creating the brand message, we work in harmony [with Honda Europe] because it is important they relate to the needs of UK customers.”

In pursuing this sales goal, Moll must maintain a balance between brand and strategic marketing within the UK. While the former has to be consistent throughout Europe, and also respect Honda’s heritage in the manufacture of virtually anything with an engine, he is also wary of telling consumers about all these products in one go in Honda’s car advertising.

Nonetheless, it would be fair to say that Honda’s car business has assumed some of the associations that come from its pursuits in other fields. Formula 1 and the Honda jet are just two examples of where the company has previously drawn inspiration, and is something Moll expects Honda to continue.“When Honda established itself in the Fifties it was considered maverick. It is not so now, but it is fiercely independent. It is about making choices for what it believes is right for itself, and encouraging everyone to do the same.”

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Source:www.marketingweek.co.uk  By Michael Barnett

Commenting on his plans and role, Chaudhry, group director sports ,marketing and events, Innocean Worldwide India, added, “I see a tremendous potential for leveraging the existing global tie-ups in various mainstream sports and emerging fields. We will be creating new sports properties that work for Hyundai as well as other clients of Innocean. It’s a hyper active phase for us with Cricket World Cup related activities panning out nationally. A lot of initiatives conceptualised by our teams at the communication  and activation levels are hitting the road every day.”

The announcement comes on the back of their anchor client Hyundai Motor signing up with International Cricket Council (ICC) as their Official Car Partner till 2015. The agency has unveiled multiple consumer engagement initiatives surrounding the World Cup for the brand. Primary among them is the Hyundai Cricket anthem, penned by Saurabh Dasgupta, executive creative director, Innocean Worlwide India. The anthem has been sung by Shaan to a score set by Clinton. On the new anthem, Dasgupta, said, “The challenge was to capture the passion of Indians in a real and jingoistic way and make it into a memorable song that has a sublime connect with the brand as well.”

Along with the anthem, the agency has conceptualised Cricket Fan Parks in the major cities where live screenings, quizzes and games were held, and a unique consumer engagement tour across Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai covering all the dealerships  – The Hyundai First Ball Tour – was also undertaken. At the venue, consumers got to see the official Kookaburra balls that will be handed over to the umpires before the start of play in the inaugural match on February 19, 2011 in Dhaka. Chaudhry has 12 years of experience and is a post graduate degree in Sports Administration and Technology from International Academy of Sports Science & Technology Lausanne, Switzerland.

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Source:Campaignindia.in 18/2/2011

Xu Zhijun, President of BMW (China) Automobile Trade Co., Ltd, stated, “BMW has accumulated strong power to develop sustainably in Chinese market in 2010.” In terms of brands, BMW successfully launched its brand strategy of “Pleasures of BMW”, which explained the mission and value of BMW brand from the perspective of Chinese culture and was highly acknowledged by the market; the nationwide dealer network was still expanding in 2010, and the number of BMW dealers has been over 200 by the end of the year.

On Noverber 16, 2010, BMW (China) announced that it had and become the only automobile cooperational partner with Chinese Olympics Committee in the future six years by signing an official agreement with the latter. According to the agreement, BMW will provide logistics guarantee for Chinese Olympics Committee in terms of vehicle usages and services in the official events of Chinese Olympics Committee, daily training of its sports teams, and Chinese sports delegation participating in various international Olympics. It is the first time that Chinese Olympics Committee establishes a long-term, not for single event, cooperational relationship with an automobile brand.

This “label” of Chinese Olympics Committee partner helped BMW to win the dual recognitions from Chinese market and Chinese social value at a new level. Dr. Christoph Stark, President and CEO of BMW (Greater China), said, “BMW has joined hands with Olympic sports in China not only because of our products and technology, but also for the resonance with our values and dreams. China’s Olympic sports not only brought reputation and self-pride for the country, but also is the symbol of hundreds million of Chinese people’s dream, passion, vitality and creativity, which conforms perfectly to the spirit of   Pleasures of BMW’. BMW China will further boost the spread of Olympics spirit in China with its marketing resources and brand evens.” In fact, BMW is now looking for various opportunities including talent support, education development, innovative technology application, enviromental burden reduction, contemporary arts boosting, and old cultures inherting to rebuild its brand values in China.

With the gradual maturation of the Chinese automobile market, the brand broadcast and recognition of present high-class car brands tend to be diversified and three-dimensional. They need to break their originally unilateral images, successfully realize brand reset and inject more added values into their brands through innovation. The total sales volume of the three major high-end brands of BMW, Audi and Benz has reached 545,000 in Chinese market in 2010. The increase means fiercer competition. For high-end brands, competitions in Chinese market have been shifting from the original product competition to the comprehensive competition including brands and services. From this aspect, Audi is striving to implant the sense of technology into itself; Benz hopes to be younger and more fashionable; BMW, which is always proud of the pleasure of driving, wishes to be more stable and introvert so as to come deeply into the Chinese society. In the whole marketing of 2010, BMW added many characteristic Chinese traditional elements, for instance, the promotion of “Pleasures of BMW” adopted Beijing Opera facial makeups, Chinese landscape paintings and Chinese seals.

Certainly, the success of marketing strategy will attract the attention of the market. In 2010, BMW signed a contract with Chinese Olympics Committee and became the exclusive auto partner in the future six years, which just demonstrated that all pulblic benefit events of BMW are beased on the strategic level. China needs to know more about BMW, and BMW also needs an opportunity to know China and take roots in China. Xu Zhijun said, “BMW has a dream in China. It wishes to fuse its development of brands and products into Chinse social development, economic development and cultural development. ”

According to BMW (China), BMW Group is implementing a strategy of supporting Olympic sports globally. BMW (UK), the auto partner of 2012 London Olympics Committee, will provide more than 4000 BMW and MINI automobiles for the athletes and event officials of London Olympic Games. Differ from other auto sponsors in the past Olympic Games, BMW Group will provide vehicles all adopt BMW’s efficient power technology including pure electric car MINI E. Actually, BMW has an ever bond with Olympics. In 1972, the summer Olympic Games was held in Munich, the hometown of BMW. BMW provided guided vehicles for marathon and footrace, and it adopted the world’s first electric vehicle BMW 1602, which became a lightspot of the Olympics Games. From then on, BMW cooperated with Olympics as the world develops. According to BMW (China), the road tests of 50 MINI Es, the pure electric vehicle that will be used on London Olympic Games, have been started in the Chinese market.

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Source:China Economic Net  15/2/2011

Car makers such as Nissan are going the extra mile to understand the needs and desires of women in India—underscoring women’s growing role in the purchase of high-value items such as cars and homes, traditionally a decision taken by male members of the family.The change has been brought about by rising education levels and ability to pursue a career, which gives women more purchasing power.“When it comes to spending money, traditionally women have had little opportunity as they were expected to manage the household budget rather than play any role in house- or car-buying decisions,” said Sharad Sarin, a marketing professor at Xavier Labour Research Institute, Jamshedpur, and an expert on consumer behaviour. “Today, that is changing. Globalization, liberalization and a growing emphasis on education have helped to raise the status of women in a family.”

Sarin gave another example to make his point. “In the 1960s, if you see, we hardly used to have cigarettes made for women. But over a period of time, we have seen mild, menthol, lights and what not. So, this evolution is happening in this sector.”Economic independence and education have made women more assertive about their choices. More than ever, women engineers and designers are influencing the outcome of vehicles to help make them more women-friendly.

Globally, women make up around 40-45% of automobile consumers. “But in India, there may not be more than 15-20% women drivers in the country and most of them are in the metro cities,” said Sarin. “Paying attention to the women segment is not new, but their growing importance in the auto segment is a welcome change.”Not surprisingly, car makers are increasingly designing vehicles with women’s comfort in mind. So far, cars designed for developed markets in the US and Europe and sold in India fail to factor that Indian women are shorter than their Western counterparts.“Hardly anybody pays attention over the height of the seat or the size of the bonnet,” said Sarin. “So, there is a definite market in that segment. In the future, I am sure more and more car makers will pay attention to that.”

Sofue and others like her are leading the change by designing models that are attractive and comfortable for women in a market where passenger vehicle production is expected to surge more than fourfold to nine million units a year by 2020, according to government estimates.“I am responsible for the products to be attractive for female customers,” said Sofue in an emailed response to a query. “I am specialized to analyse the difference of male/female from physical, behavioural and mental aspects and to plan the product specifications to be attractive for female customers.”

In the 1990s, most cars came with a courtesy mirror only on the passenger side, never on the driver’s side. The notion was that while men would drive, women would sit and do their make-up on the passenger seat. Today, most cars come with such mirrors on both sides.“If you have noticed in our new WagonR, there is a tray under the driver’s seat where women can keep their boots and drive with comfort,” said Mayank Pareek, managing executive officer, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. “We keep these things in mind while manufacturing a car.”

Even men who do not include women directly in the purchase decision are influenced by what they perceive women’s impression of the vehicle would be.In mature automobile markets such as the US, women car ownership is as high as 45%. That excludes many women who drive vehicles registered under a male member of their family.“Considering these factors, Nissan Motor had established the group to work intensively on product development for female customers,” said Sofue, who is now in China working on a similar study for Nissan.

India is not a unique case, but some factors are peculiar to the country. “Women’s opinions matter surely for family cars. Normally, it is a joint decision,” Sofue said. Many a time a “car is purchased and registered under a male name, but chosen and driven by female owners, such as wives and daughters.”Many women feel they aren’t being taken seriously at the dealership—a challenge for car companies in an environment where every sale counts. Some dealerships are even offering sensitivity training to the male salesmen.“Women are very capable of bargaining and want to be involved in the process,” said Pradeep Saxena, a former marketing veteran with Hero Honda Motors Ltd and now a market researcher with TNS Automotive. “There’s a missed opportunity when dealers don’t hear what women want and what they need, especially when women have more purchasing power and are more involved in decision-making.”

Rising competition will mean car makers may have to introduce at least two-three models a year, said Jatin Chawla, sector analyst with India Infoline Ltd.The nation’s automotive sector will become the fourth largest in the world by 2015, overtaking the European market, consultancy firm Booz and Co. said last month.With more models to choose from, car makers such as Nissan and Maruti have realized the importance of wooing women, a segment that will grow in numbers among car buyers.“At the end of the day, if you ignore women in today’s world you will lose business,” said Saxena.

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Source:Livemint.com 14-3-2011

Known as Mahindra Samriddhi Centres, the dealers have set up small farms to demonstrate the best farming techniques. The centres also conduct tests on soil samples for a fee of Rs50 and advise the cultivators on what nutrients to add to their soil.Eighty centres have come up already, and the company plans to raise their number to 250 by the end of next year.It has also set up a website in several regional languages to provide information on diverse topics such as use of fertilizers, location of cold storages and mechanization centres.

“Mahindra is the first tractor company to start these rural brand-building initiatives,” said Priya Monga, business head, RC&M Pvt. Ltd, an experiential marketing company that has worked on several rural marketing campaigns. “It’s highly possible that its competitors would follow suit.”Goyle said, “We are leaders but we also need to be thought leaders in the industry.”

India’s tractor industry grew 40% last year to 400,000 units. M&M, India’s largest tractor firm along with Punjab Tractors Ltd, which it acquired in 2007, has a 42% market share. It sold 160,000 units last fiscal. Punjab Tractors, which still sells under the Swaraj brand, makes up 12% of sales. M&M is silent about sales targets this fiscal.In the past, other automotive manufacturers selling in rural India have also undertaken brand-building exercises.

Maruti Suzuki India Ltd and Hero Honda Motors Ltd have dedicated rural marketing teams that also work on brand-building. Sugar maker DCM Shriram Consolidated Ltd has set up supermarkets that help extend its brand in rural India.

A good monsoon this year, which Goyle describes as “a catalyst” for purchases, will help M&M increase its sales. Increased infrastructure spending and higher procurement prices for farmers could also boost sales.
Tractors are also rented out to contractors to be used for haulage and transport activities. With 80-85% of tractors being sold on credit, easier credit availability will also add to sales.

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Source: www.livemint.com/30-5-2010

In keeping with this strategy, TVS launched Jive, the urban bike with an auto clutch and the unisex metal-bodied scooter Wego in the previous fiscal, as against commuter bikes and sporty motorcycles that the top two players specialise in. In launching the unisex scooter, for instance, TVS was veering from the Hero Honda positioning of the vehicle for women.TVS’ top management believes it can only survive through gradual growth in a market dominated by two big-muscle rivals.

As the third biggest player in a market that crossed the 10 million unit level in March, TVS’ 1.5 million units-a-year share isn’t big enough to take on market leader Hero Honda’s 4.6 million tally in FY09-10 or Bajaj Auto’s 2.5 million units in the same period.Both Bajaj and Hero Honda are stepping on the gas in terms of sales targets in the new fiscal. Bajaj has already announced it plans to sell 4 million two and three-wheelers in the new financial year while Hero Honda is planning a new greenfield factory because its Gurgaon, Dharuhera and Haridwar plants are already working to capacity.

Bajaj Auto MD Rajiv Bajaj calls the two biggest consumer segments in India’s motorcycle market Ram and Krishna. “Ram is the good guy who buys a bike for functional reasons while Krishna is the naughty guy who wants some fun with his bike,” he said. “Between the two, they command the lion’s share of the bike market in India.”TVS’ mantra is to set less ambitious targets but grow consistently and with enough geographical spread to derisk its business. It plans to sell 2 million two-wheelers in the new fisc and will spend around Rs 200 crore in adding capacity at its factory in Hosur, Karnataka.

The new focus does not, however, mean TVS will not aim for the juicier slice of the market, namely three-wheelers. It entered the business couple of years ago and from around 600 units in March 2008, sold 2,600 in April 2010. The company aims to take the figure up to 3,500 units a month.While Bajaj tops the three-wheeler market with 30,000 units sales a month, TVS plans to sell around 40,000 units in the whole of the current financial year. In 2011-12, the target is to sell around 60,000 three-wheelers and 2.4 million two-wheelers.

Auto analysts say the two-wheeler market is growing nicely enough for all three to survive and grow, with the bike market expected to clock around 12 million units in the new financial year. “The two-wheeler market should clock around a million units a month including exports of which bikes alone will be at 800,000 to 900,000 units,” said Mr Bajaj.Given that, experts see TVS’ niche-and-grow strategy as viable. “The two-wheeler segment in India is at a mature level with a strong distribution network and penetration across the country,” says Raghu Venkatnarayan, executive director, auto practice, Ernst & Young.

TVS is a significant third player in this market and for it to strengthen its position from here on, it should focus on developing products that will take a particular category to the next level and create new benchmarks, he adds. “Differentiation will be the key factor for TVS to grow in this market.”Auto analysts, however, are divided on the positioning strategy that best serves the third player in any market. An analyst with a Delhi-based multinational consultancy quoted from the Al Ries and Jack Trout work, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, which he said holds good for all products: in the long run, every market becomes a two-horse race.
Others say each company is different and TVS has managed its fortunes well since it went into the motorcycle business with Suzuki in the 1980s. An analyst with a Mumbai-based broking firm points out that TVS clocked over 20% growth in the first three months of 2010, in line with the kind of growth Hero Honda (23.6%) and Bajaj (30%) clocked in FY09-10.

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Source: ET 16-4-2010

The influence of internet is maximum in case of premium bikes such as Bajaj Pulsar, Hero Honda CBZ and TVS Apache, Being a lifestyle product targeted at 18-25 year old urban college goers or those in their first jobs, premium bikes is a hot topic on the internet. Pulsar and Apache in fact have their own fan clubs and groups on the internet.
Some of the popular internet sites and blogs on the radar screens of bike marketers include xbhp.com, mouthshut.com, bikenomads.com, bajajpulsar.org, and yahoo groups for Royal Enfield, Hero Honda Karizma group and TVS Apache. “Online groups and product review sites are now the first point of reference for a prospective Apache buyer. If he reads a positive review, there’s a great probability of him purchasing our product or vice-versa. As such, we have to be alive to the reviews and discussions posted on these sites and incorporate these in our product features and brand communication,” says Mr Narasimhan of TVS Motors. The strategy seems to have paid-off. Apache is now India’s second largest selling premium bike.

Taking a cue from Apache’s success, Hero Honda incorporated internet feedback while marketing its 150cc CBZ. Prior to its launch, the company ran a teaser campaign asking prospective consumers to email their expectation from a high-performance bike. The idea was to give consumers a say in product development. Post-launch, Hero Honda created a dedicated website for CBZ to gather customer feedback on the product. “Giving the demographic profile of premium bike customers, internet has emerged as a powerful tool to connect with the consumer. Our internet initiative is still at a nascent stage and as we gain experience we will ramp it up,” says P S Sunder, head marketing, Hero Honda Motors.

Corporate interest in blogs may be rising by the day, but it doesn’t translate into tons of advertising revenues for owners/creators of these sites. This is because any corporate sponsorship will compromise their biggest assets – credibility and frankness of discussion. “Advertisement will kill the impartiality and frankness of these sites. So we remain a distant observer and don’t get involved in any manner,” says Mr Prasad Narasimhan, vice-president marketing of TVS Motors.

Some, however, discount the influence of blogs and internet groups on customer’s purchase decision. “Internet blogs are still a niche medium in India. My own calculation is that not more than 1% of the bike owning population refer to internet before making a purchase decision. May be its higher for performance bike customers, but they are still a minority,” says Atul Gupta, vice president Marketing, Suzuki Motorcycle India.

Source:Economic times/- 3/3/2007

A distinct feature of the car was detailed on the pages with every cut out. The last page featured a full page ad of the car with the final message: ‘We’ve put a lot into it. You’ll get even more out of it’, a tongue-in-cheek reference to both the features and the innovation.”We were looking to do something that would make people talk about us. Word of mouth publicity is one of the best kinds of promotion anyway,” Kothe, chief general manager, marketing and public relations, Volkswagen India said

If the innovation was aimed at getting people to talk, it sure achieved its purpose as discussions sparked off across social networking sites, either celebrating or dismissing the innovation.While the initial idea for the innovation came from Volkswagen, Kothe says that eventually, it was a team effort of the company, DDB Mudra and Mediacom, the creative and the media agencies, respectively.”The idea was to signal the start of sales and create the maximum impact. We wanted a simple way to break the clutter,” says Rajeev Raja, national creative director, DDB Mudra Group.

Speaking on the innovation, Divya Gururaj, managing director, Mediacom, says, “While competing brands such as Maruti and Tata have been around for years, Volkswagen is a rather new company in India. The challenge for the brand is to get noticed. That is why doing a half page print ad like most others would not do and such clutter breaking ideas are needed for the brand to be further established.”

The company also launched an innovative mechanical billboard with just the manufacturer’s logo on it and a small model car of the Beetle moving across the length and breadth of the ‘VW’ sign.When contacted, Volkswagen chose not to disclose the ad spends on these campaigns. But the company, which is the largest carmaker in Europe, is definitely taking the ‘highway’ to success by launching clutter-breaking, innovative campaigns.

In november,The Times of India has created a print roadblock for Volkswagen across its edition. The roadblock includes a spread of Volkswagen’s various brands Jetta, Passat and Touareg in the country. The print campaign looks at creating awareness about Volkswagen’s German technology and the company’s history.

On Christmas Eve, they launched a trailblazer in Mumbai, by deploying a helicopter to unfurl a 10,000 sq ft banner, which displayed the New Beetle and the manufacturer’s logo.The banner had a picture of the New Volkswagen Beetle in shiny red colour and the copy said, ‘The New Beetle from Volkswagen’. It was carried by the campaign helicopter, which took off from the Juhu Aerodrome, flying over Vile Parle, Bandra Kurla Complex, Worli Sea Link, Worli Sea Face, Warden Road, Marine Drive and Nariman Point, before returning to the Juhu Aerodrome.