SX4 the masses

The sedan from India's leading car maker wins top marks.

The packaging of SX4 was a classic case of benchmarking against the segment leader, the Honda City.

Maruti Suzuki, the makers of SX4 ensured that the car had everything that the City had, and some more. For example, the City was not available with ABS and airbags, not even as an option, and the ZXi version of the SX4 was packed to the brim with safety features and other creature comforts.

The trade and enthusiast media which feeds the opinion leaders went gaga over it and that probably triggered off a good word-of-mouth reputation for the car.

As an automotive design, SX4 looked smouldering-spanking-new and under the hood was a brand new, powerful engine too. Mind you, there was no diesel engine option.

Like in the case of the Swift, the manufacturer was banking on a petrol powered car to attain the necessary volumes before a diesel engine (which would sustain numbers) arrived.

Volumes did come, with the SX4 selling 3,000 units a month, pushing up Maruti Suzuki's market share in the A3 (mid-size) segment from 16 per cent (April-November 2006) to 23 per cent (April-November 2007) according to data provided by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM).

Now that may look stunning to some, but those numbers also tell us the tale of a market leader who was inactive in a segment for a very long time. To find out how an automotive sub-brand became so successful, we should spend some time studying its evolution.

To begin with, Maruti Suzuki invented the modern C-segment as we know it in India with the Maruti 1000 (which later became the Esteem) some 16 years back. The only other sedan that they launched after that in India was the Baleno.

The fact that the Esteem is still in production, sums up the inactivity of Maruti Suzuki in this segment, concentrating on making small cars and big profits instead.

The Baleno was launched late, had an ambitious price tag and had to fend off strong competition from a host of other car makers "" the result was lukewarm sales.

It is the good old link between Suzuki and General Motors that resulted in the development of the SX4. The car was engineered along with Fiat (GM was going through a rough marriage with the Italians at that time) and it resulted in an Italian clone that goes by the name Sedici.

Suzuki chose the alpha-numerical route to name the car to signify four-wheel drive, which was available in the SX4 and the Sedici in Europe.

Suzuki shared a stretched-out Swift platform for this machine. While the European car was a hatchback, plans were, er, hatched to launch a three-box version that could be built in India and share the same parts-bin with the Swift.

The company had initially planned this car launch in 2003-04. The A2 segment (which Swift belongs to) was the largest segment ""it still is, accounting for more than 70 per cent of car sales.

"We believed there were customers who will demand a car with better features, graduate from the basic small car to a larger car," says Mayank Pareek, senior chief general manager, marketing, Maruti Suzuki.

The primary target audience was identified as a set of customers who look at cars not as a mode of transport, but as an extension of their personality.

But SX4 didn't have the semi-luxury aura of a brand like Honda to back it. Neither did it have diesel economy as its sales pitch. But it was good looking, felt responsive on test drives and was well priced and well packaged.

Suffice to say that it was the product that was going to attract people and not just the communication. The advertising, however, did not play up the strong features that the SX4 came with. It rather dwelled on the car's macho imagery. So the advertising did the part of snagging customers to take test drives, while the car sold for itself.

However, it's important to remember that it was the Swift that first created the right exciting and contemporary imagery for Maruti Suzuki, which the SX4 capitalised on as another sub-brand.

The company used the momentum created by the Swift and established a strong presence with the SX4 in a segment where it was struggling.

R Balakrishnan, chairman and chief creative officer of Lowe admits, "Maruti has a huge brand value in India. Its communication is aimed at adding some imagery and we had to ensure that the product perception was not destroyed. We needed to support the product and not sell it."

Obviously, the strategy seems to have worked, as Lowe is currently planning a second campaign on similar lines.

Why should the car be positioned as a macho man's car? While SUVs and exotic sports are perceived to be macho, no sedan could aspire to be that, till the SX4.

"No car maker or sub-brand had taken a stand as a manly car. So we took the line 'men are back'. Besides the car had features which made it macho," says Balakrishnan.

Pre-launch activity involved radio spots, blogs and retail promotions around the SX4 brand. Ensuring good word-of-mouth involved an aggressive test drive campaign.

"We knew those who test drove the SX4 would get smitten by its performance, and that is what actually happened. They started talking about the car," says Pareek.

Then a packed schedule of international cricket matches played by India, helped launch the now-famous "Men Are Back" television campaign. The car was extensively advertised on sports channels too during the India-England and the India-Australia cricket series.

"We also sponsored the Twenty20 match between India and Australia and gave the man-of-the-match an SX4," adds Pareek. Certainly, SX4 made a match of it.

(Additional inputs by Govindkrishna Seshan)