Riding on emotions

Smart, Indianised communication has helped Chevrolet drive into customers' hearts

Amit Dutta

General Motors India (GM) prefers to call Chevrolet's entry in the Indian market a re-launch. In July 2003, Chevy was back in the country after about 40 years.

But perhaps the only connect for consumers is a faint recollection of the humongous luxury vehicles that were the Chevys of the 1950s and 1960s.

Remember the iconic Impala "" a cult favourite with film stars in those days? The new Chevys are altogether different "" be it the style or technology "" and even a better-informed consumer finds it hard to correlate the two.

 The good old days don't really matter to the professionals in the Brand Derby "" they're more concerned with how successful Brand Chevrolet has been in the past year or so. They rated Chevrolet the third most successful brand across categories and No. 1 in automobiles, which is significant, considering there are nine automobile brands in the survey.

What made Chevrolet race to the top? Derby respondents believe it is the innovative communication GM adopted that made the difference. GM got the emotional hook right, realised the importance of word-of-mouth and positioned the Chevrolet vehicles intelligently. For Derby respondents, product styling and the features come only after these, although GM puts them right on top.

So how did GM make it big with Chevrolet? The company says that "" the Bollywood connection notwithstanding "" brand awareness of Chevrolet was low. The first task, therefore, was to build the brand almost entirely from scratch.

In the US, indeed across the world, Chevrolet is seen as a heritage American brand, and one with strong emotional bonds with its owners. GM wanted to extend those brand values to its India entry as well.

 "At the same time, we realised that to make the brand appeal to Indian consumers we need to make it emotionally strong and attach it to Indian cultures and values," says Amit Dutta, vice-president, marketing, General Motors India.

Ad agency Enterprise Nexus was brought on board to create a communications plans that would include not just ads, but also customer-centric activities that would make a strong connect with potential buyers.

"In the past we have seen that a number of foreign brands faced a rejection because they never fit into the cultural mainstream of the country. A cultural assurance was thus a must," points out Alok Aggrawal, branch director, Enterprise Nexus.

GM rolled out its first Chevy ad a month before it first launch (in March 2003) "" the Forrester, a sports utility vehicle. Interestingly, the ad didn't feature any vehicle.

Instead, it showed a typical Indian cultural imagery, signing off with "I am Chevrolet", to create the emotional link. The idea was to put the Chevrolet brand in people's mind before the automobiles themselves.

By the time the Optra was launched in the July 2003, brand awareness had gone up significantly. GM then came out with an ad that focused on the benefits and luxury that the car offered.

The initial Optra ads for both TV and print were completely car-centric. Six months later, GM rolled out its moon-roof Karva Chauth ad, which focused on the bond between a man and his wife, again rooted in strong cultural values.

Says Aggarwal, "It is a unique branding structure, which used a mix of product design and features along with strong cultural and emotional assurances to create a communication package." Similarly, the "teddy bear" for the multi-utility vehicle Tavera (launched July 2004) focused on family bonding.

GM claims that its ad budgets were not large compared to some of its competitors, but what did the trick, besides the general likeability for the ads, was the strategy to show the ads in bursts instead of showing them through the year.

"Whenever the brand was shown, it was with a lot of intensity. The impact on consumers was certainly much more," says Aggrawal.

GM's focus on building a connect with Chevy customers seems to have helped. Chevrolet ensures its customers are pampered with invitations to film premieres, freebies such as car polishing, invitation rallies and so on.

"The idea is to create a personal bond with the customers and get their feedback on their vehicles' performance and our services. This makes us understand the customers need and how we can improve. On the other hand, a satisfied customer helps us with a good word of mouth," says Dutta.

The Derby may have given the Chevrolet a rousing ovation, but do the numbers reflect the same optimism? Actually, they do "" sort of. Chevrolet's Optra is No. 2 in the D segment, with a 24 per cent market share; it's right behind Toyota's Corrolla's 26 per cent market share. While Corrolla sold about 858 cars in 2004, Optra wasn't far behind, at 788. GM seems fairly satisfied with that.

After all, says Dutta, "People are certainly much more familiar with Toyota as a brand than Chevrolet; Toyota vehicles have been present in India for quite some time. Plus, the Corrolla has the advantage of being launched a year-and-a-half ahead of Optra."

Industry experts, too, think Chevrolet's performance has been better than average. "While the Corrolla is a ore familiar name worldwide, the Optra has significantly raised its market share through intelligent marketing and promotion," says automobile consultant Tutu Dhawan.