Omnipresent?

CAMPAIGN LOGIC

A Maruti Omni is parked outside a bungalow, where preparations for a wedding are in full swing. Amidst the hustle and bustle, a hassled, middle-aged woman asks shrilly if the lights have arrived.

A young man, who's deep in conversation with a group of people, immediately turns around and makes a reassuring gesture. He promptly gets into his Omni and, manoeuvreing deftly through the teeming roads, drive back with lights loaded into the car.

Next scene: the harrassed woman is fretting, this time because nobody has gone to the station to pick up a relative. Once again, the young man comes to her rescue and zips his Omni to the station and back, with all the luggage stuffed into the car.

Then he's driving a carload of girls to the beauty parlour. Finally, when the hunt is on for the groom, the Omni arrives, driven by the same man "" now attired as the groom "" making the same reassuring gesture. The latest Maruti Omni television commercial ends with a male voice-over intoning: Sab fit karde (Makes everything fit).

The Omni's been in the parking lot for a long while. Its last television commercial was made in 2000-01. That ad emphasised the "spaciousness" of the Omni "" it had a group of children dressed as Hanuman's vaanar sena pile into the car, their "weapons" in tow. That commercial had a fairly long run "" Maruti put it on air even last year.

Before it let the new campaign out on the roads, ad agency Lowe test-drove a few other options. One was to present the Omni as a straight, value-for-money proposition. Other alternatives included directly targeting self-employed traders, with a tag line "My business partner" or playing on the concept of a "family" car. The agency ultimately hit upon the combination of the last two options.

Taking the "monkey brigade" concept further, the new campaign emphasises not just space, but also the multi-purpose utility proposition of the Omni.

Points out a Maruti executive, "The Omni's sliding doors can open even in narrow spaces unlike conventional car doors. Also, the Omni has the smallest turning radius among all cars in India."

Maruti's doing its best to cash in on those plus points. Launched as a regular Maruti Van about 19 years ago, the company changed the name to Omni in 1987-88.

The car has covered a long distance since. Now, the Omni is also a cargo vehicle, an ambulance and a taxi. While the company launched the "Cargo" variant early this year, the other two variants were introduced in 2003. Says the Maruti executive, "We wanted to capitalise on these niches to portray the Omni as a multi-purpose car."

While the taxi variant is a regular Omni car, the cargo and ambulance variants have been especially designed and modified for the purpose. For instance, the Omni Cargo, priced at Rs 1.78 lakh and targeted at the self-employed, trader community, comes with metal sheets instead of glass windows, a gauge divide between the driver seat and the luggage space and rear seats removed.

Similarly, the ambulance version of the Omni (Rs 2.6 lakh) comes with special attachments such as stretchers, hangers and rods; it is priced at Rs 2.6 lakh. That's not too much above the entry price of the regular Omni: Rs 2.22 lakh.

Lowe Executive Vice President Mohit Beotra believes the new campaign will work across the Omni's variants. "We realised that there was more than one opportunity for Omni that we could tap into. And it was important to communicate the various benefits/usages of the car. Thus the communication has now begun to support Omni's variants as well."

Pushing the variants may turn out to be critical for Maruti (in fact, according to sources, it is believed to have doubled its marketing budget for the Omni to Rs 10 crore).

Already, over the years, there's been a downgrading in the Omni's customer base. At present, over 60 per cent of Omni buyers are from socio-economic category (SEC) B, whereas, according to Maruti sources, in earlier years, a large portion of SEC A patronised this brand. Moreover, over 60 per cent of Omni buyers are first-time carowners. The typical Omni buyer at present is a middle-aged, self-employed male, belonging to a relatively large family (of more than four or five members), and who requires a vehicle that serves a dual utility. Adds Beotra, "A significant part of the Omni audiences comprise those who use the car as a business vehicle in the day and a family vehicle at night."

Tellingly, according to the new classification of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), the Omni falls in segment C (entry-level, three-box cars).

The only other product in this segment is another Maruti offering, the Versa. But that's not where the competition lies. According to SIAM data, the Omni garnered a 93 per cent market share in the C segment last year (2003-04), with the segment growing at 15 per cent.

Over the past four years, Maruti has been selling about 55-60,000 units of Omni every year on average. Company executives say the threat to the Omni is from the diesel, multi-utility segment.

Now, there's one more player joining that fray. Last week, Premier launched its Sigma in Pune and Hyderabad, with a phased roll-out across the country slated for the next few months.

The Sigma could easily pass off as the Omni's twin, with sliding rear doors and almost as big a luggage space at the back. In short, it's just a taller, more spacious Omni "" but with a diesel engine.

Of course, it's likely to be priced significantly higher "" around Rs 4 lakh. But Maruti's clearly warming up to ride on terrain that may become progressively rougher.