Nissan’s first campaign for the Micra centres on how the hatchback reduces the stress of driving
Nissan Motors India, which launched the fourth-generation Micra in mid-July, is the latest entrant in the overcrowded B+ segment. In an attempt to break the clutter, it has rolled out two television commercials (TVCs) around its launch campaign, “The new Nissan Micra: Drive simpler, live better.” It had come up with two 15-second pre-booking TVCs right before the Micra’s launch which introduced the Japanese car maker’s strategy for the urban youth, which is to reduce the stress of driving. The latest TVCs drive home the same promise of making the experience of driving enjoyable.
The new 30-second TVCs, which went on air in the first week of August, will run for about a month. In one TVC, a man in his early thirties is seen in a car park. He looks hassled as he searches frantically for the keys in his pocket. In the next slide, Nissan Micra brand ambassador Ranbir Kapoor walks past him and stands near the Micra. Both of them acknowledge each other’s presence. Kapoor wears a cheeky gesture and asks him what is he looking for? In the next shot, Kapoor shows his empty hands to this person. The voiceover: “Why do you look?” Kapoor points out at the door handle of the Micra to show the power of ‘I-Key’ or intelligent key — with the I-Key fob in your pocket, you can start the engine with the push of a button and lock or unlock the doors by touching a switch on the door handle. The voiceover follows: “When the key to life is no key.” The camera now zooms in on the I-Key. Kapoor tells the fellow to join him inside the Micra.
He then looks at the start button, and asks him to go ahead and push the button. The voiceover: “Why do you not know the power of human touch?” The camera shifts the focus on the push-button start inside the car. The Micra starts and the man sitting next to Kapoor is taken aback, and looks happy.
The four-wheeler zooms out, and hits a straight road. As Kapoor drives across the Micra, the man looks in the rear-view mirror, and sees two girls and a boy seated comfortably on the back seat. The idea of course is to show the spacious interior of the car. The voiceover: “Why do your dear ones have to sit so near?” After crossing some city landscapes, the Micra stops at a car park when the film ends. Now, it is the man’s turn to try the door trick; Kapoor winks. The TVC ends with the voiceover: “The new Nissan Micra: Drive simpler, live better.”
A better way
The campaign for the Micra in India follows Nissan’s global tagline: “The way you move”. Hover Automotive India (the marketing arm of Nissan Motor India) Vice-president (sales, marketing and after-sale service) Abhijeet Pandit says: “Nissan campaigns, global as well as in India, build on the logic of how to do things in a better way. The Micra competes with the Swift, i20, Polo and Punto. The B+ segment sells around 300,000 units per annum, and we are eyeing more than 30 per cent share of this market with the three Micra models: the XE (Rs 3.98 lakh), XL (Rs 4.69 lakh) and XV (Rs 5.29 lakh).”
The brief to its creative agency, TBWA/India, says Pandit, was to establish the Micra as a young and trendy car that reduces the stress of driving on a city road, and highlight its technology and features.
The second TVC focuses on the maneuverability of the Micra as its turning radius is 4.65 metres (in comparison, Volkswagen Polo’s and Ford Figo’s turning radius is 4.9 metres and Maruti Suzuki Swift’s is 4.7 metres). This one too opens in a car park where a middle-aged executive notices the Micra wedged between two cars. He estimates that there is little space left to take the car out. The next shot zooms into the car’s mirror to show that Kapoor is sitting inside the Micra with the voiceover: “Why worry about space?” The man tries hard to map the distance between the Micra and another car with his hands. The voiceover continues: “… in the circle of life”. He then gets inside the Micra and challenges Kapoor to get the car out. A jovial Kapoor accepts the challenge, and starts the car with the push-button. He backs the car, and quite neatly swerves the four-wheeler out of the narrow space. In the next shot, it weaves through a marriage procession. The voiceover: “Why worry about movement? ...in the path of life.” The TVC then cuts to a huge shot of the Micra on smooth wide road, and the voiceover: “Why wonder about distances?” A close shot of the dashboard displays the needle that indicates the tank is still full, and continues the voiceover: “...in this never-ending life.” With a few driving shots Kapoor looks on, and the TVC ends: “The new Nissan Micra: Drive simpler, live better.”
The frequency of the Micra TVCs is 155 spots per day on an average on the leading national and regional channels. “With a small gap of a couple of weeks, the Micra TVCs will be aired again where the content will remain the same, but the duration will be shortened to 20 seconds,” says Pandit.
Differentiation rules
The TVCs are directed by Bollywood film-maker Anurag Basu. TBWA India Director Nirmalya Sen explains why the Micra TVC is different from other hatchbacks: “We took the marriage procession to show the shortest turning radius of the Micra because that is the worst irritant that every Indian faces while driving. The shoot was largely done in Delhi and parts of it were shot in Mumbai.”
As the base model (XE) doesn’t have a push-button start, is the TVC driving buyers to the top-end variants? The Micra, Pandit claims, leads the B+ segment on mileage — 18.06 km to a litre, way above industry average of 16.5 km to a litre. Its target customers fall in the age bracket of 25 to 35, says Pandit, adding, “The pricing is competitive, and the mid-management executives are our buyers. The top-end (XV) and the mid-grade (XL) have sold more. The USP of the Micra is its push-button start, which is otherwise a feature in luxury cars of sport utility vehicles. We’ve got 3,000 bookings by now. It’s been just a month since the Micra’s launch, and 500 cars are plying on the Indian roads, while more than 1,000 units have been sold.”
The car will be manufactured at Nissan’s plant in Chennai. Nissan scores high over its competitors as it has managed to achieve about 85 per cent localisation of its design for the Micra. “We have 20 dealers/service centres across India now, and we are looking at increasing it to 30 by the end of this financial year. With this campaign, Nissan Motors is trying to strike the right chord with the quintessential Indian car-buyer, before it launches its sedan some time in 2011,” says Pandit.
He adds that Maruti Suzuki’s Swift, which leads the B+ segment of the passenger car market, is the Micra’s arch rival. The market place just got tougher for all.
