Tata Motors ramps up association with IPL; gives Harrier a massive launch platform

Tata Motors has continued their association with Vivo IPL for the second consecutive year. The newly launched Harrier has been designated as the Official Partner of the Vivo Indian Premier League for the 2019 season. 

It may be recalled that Tata Motors had launched the automatic version of its car, Nexon, during the Vivo IPL 2018. 

Speaking on how this association has helped create brand salience for Tata Motors, Vivek Srivatsa, Head - Marketing, Passenger Vehicles Business Unit, Tata Motors, told Adgully that there were two reasons why the company had tied up with IPL first was that cricket is a religion in India; and secondly, the number of followers for IPL have been increasing every year. 

“The tie-up made a lot of sense, taking into account the sheer number of people who watch the tournament. The reach that IPL has in the country, especially in smaller towns, is very high, and consistently over 40-50 days we will be able to reach those smaller towns. That’s a big benefit. Increasingly, there is a mixed audience, a lot of women and children are watching IPL as well, so that gives us a huge advantage to reach different kinds of people. It is not only the traditional male audience, but also the family audience,” Srivatsa added. 

Star India telecasting the tournament on 15 of its channels and in various languages has also definitely helped the auto major. Star has latched on to the popularity of cricket and they have realised that they need to go regional to get the maximum level of viewership. 

Speaking about preparing the grounds with BCCI for Tata Harrier’s launch during IPL, Srivatsa said, “Last year, we created a couple of properties. Along with displaying the car in the ground, we created two properties. The first was called ‘Super Striker of the Match’, wherein in every match one player used to get a reward of Rs 1 lakh and trophy from Tata Motors; and ‘Season Super Striker’, wherein one winner won a Tata Nexon. The other property that was even more exciting was the ‘Fan Catch’. Anybody in the crowd who caught the ball with one hand when somebody hit a sixer was awarded Rs 1 lakh from Tata Motors. This gave us a huge level of excitement among the audience and one lucky winner among all the catchers stood a chance to win a Tata car. This year, we don’t want to reinvent the wheel and, therefore, will put our money behind these two very strong properties. You need to reinforce strong existing properties so that they become stronger every year.” 

Speaking about Tata Nexon’s sales, Srivatsa claimed that the numbers have been increasing since the time of its launch a year and a half back. “We were among the last to enter the compact SUV space in September 2017, but as we talk today, we are No. 2 in the segment. Nexon today is probably one of the most aspirational compact SUVs in the market,” he said. 

IPL is not the only platform that Tata Motors is banking on, the company began to create buzz around the Harrier from December 2018 onwards, when it conducted a media drive. Post that, the company carried out a lot of on-ground activation in keeping with its touch and feel marketing strategy. Srivatsa informed, “We had experience zones in many cities, called ‘Discover the Harrier’, where the customer could come and experience our new product even before the launch. Normally, automotive companies don’t allow customers to view the car before launch, but from December onwards customers could see the car.” 

Post that, Tata Motors undertook a large-scale campaign for Harrier, where it had heavy presence on TV and digital around the time of the launch. The brand had a fairly strong in outdoor medium as well. “The next wave is going to be the IPL and we are going to launch an IPL-oriented TV campaign for the Harrier, which will be launched on the day of the first match,” Srivatsa further said. 

When asked about the market penetration that the company is eyeing for the Harrier, Srivatsa replied, “Harrier is a unique product, which doesn’t fit into any segment that exists. It hits the sweet spot among many other products in that price range. We have not limited ourselves to any kind of numbers. Right now, we are booked for about 5 months of production. Customer response has been amazing and we are thankful to them. We have put up a new plant in Pune for the Harrier that has enough capacity to increase production in line with customer demand. We are optimistic and hope to target a completely new segment in this price range between Rs 12.5 lakh and Rs 20 lakh. If you saw with the Nexon, we began with 3,500 and it has gone up to 5,500. We expect a similar ramp-up to happen with the Harrier as well.”