Summary
Aniruddha Haldar, Vice President (Marketing) – Commuters, Corporate Brand & Dealer Transformation, TVS Motor Company, said, "TVS Motor Company has long recognised Gen Z as a key consumer cohort. Some of the favourite brands of Gen Z come from our stable, like in EV – TVS iQUBE and the TVS Racing born TVS Apache series and TVS NTORQ 125. We will again seize their imagination with the TVS Raider and its Naked Street Styling, best-in-class
Challenge
Homegrown brand TVS was looking to introduce a sporty stylish commuter bike in the market. Their bullseye TG? Gen Z. However, the big challenge was the fact that this was a generation that had certain preconceived notions about TVS. Uncool. Outdated. Not for us. In order to break this perception, we decided to introduce the bike in the most unexpected manner. Rather than stick to the industry launch template; we decoded our audience, understood their digital behaviour and created a launch campaign specifically tailored to their streaming habits.
Objective
1. To launch a brand new commuter motorcycle coming from the house of TVS 2. To ensure that the motorcycle is positioned such that it appeals to the millennials and the GenZ 3. To redefine the ‘cool quotient' for the TG through the launch product and get the motorcycle to be associated with being ‘WICKED' (To be distinctively cool/Have swag) 4. To make the motorcycle stand apart from its competitors by calling out its first-in-class features and distinctive stylish personality 5. Leverage the digital native behaviour of the TG to drive strong engagement for the launch and establish the desired positioning.
Strategy
We followed the division of three phases to make a mark--Pre Launch, Launch & Post Launch. For each of the phases we wanted to do something different, we wanted to include the ‘wickedness'--the motorcycle's personality--in our strategy too. Once we got to know that our key platforms to reach our target audience were YT, IG, and FB - we decided to put a wicked spin on things. We chose YT as our primary platform for the pre-launch and launch phases. Pre-launch Phase: An Unexpected Review 1.0 Review videos on the internet have become the norm. More importantly, they tend to happen AFTER the vehicle has been launched. We introduced the first-of-a-kind bike review that happens BEFORE the launch, and doesn't showcase the bike in it, yet holds the power to get motorcycle buffs' curiosity piqued! Our audience loves to follow the content of their favorite creators, and so that we cover our target groups well, we collaborated with 20 influencers. We ensured all our influencers are spread across the motorcycle's key markets and have a great reach and following. To further fuel the ongoing excitement for the launch, we also decided to roll out 4 teaser videos Launch: For the first time ever, a digital launch for the brand TVS. What's bigger? This was India's first LIVE stream motorcycle launch! We collaborated with 12 influencers that streamed the Live Launch Event via their respective Youtube Channels as well. We garnered 500K Views on Watch along. Combined views of 6x (500K) via influencers while the TVS page had 95K views. Post Launch: Additionally, we also had our set of 20 influencers do a grand unboxing of the motorcycle to showcase it in its full glory for the audience, which generated a lot of hype for the brand, especially amongst the automobile
Data
We did a pan India market research, YT tops the list in terms of media consumption with an average time of 78 min. spent on the platform every day. This wasn't an opportunity we could let go of. We chose it as our primary platform for the pre-launch and launch phases. During the pandemic, Youtube saw a 20.5% surge in its subscriber base, and a huge portion of the surge comes from our TG too: The same report revealed that the millennials remain the most active group on YouTube in India, with 70 percent of viewership coming from the age group 18-34. We observed that our TG spent on average 85 mins. per day on audio, video & entertainment platforms, and on average 65 mins. per day on gaming apps & platforms. Hence, we selected influencers (gaming and comedy categories) that we believe were in tandem with this observation, relevant, and had record views for their LIVE streams.
Solution
Instead of following the generic route of getting Influencers to give plain and simple reviews, we created intrigue by showing snapshots of the product without actually showing the product which garnered a lot of traction online. Unboxing is a very popular concept, but has never really been utilised in the automotive sector in India. We took this to the next level by sending Influencers the bike in a massive box and getting them to actually unbox and review it. Generic digital launches are very PR centric, but TVS Raider leveraged existing behaviour which is - Live Streaming, hence tapping into the gaming influencers which appeals to a major part of our TG insted of the expected automotive influencers.
Results
Prelaunch We saw success across all the phases of the campaign. In the pre-launch phase the audiences went wild with speculation, trying to figure out what was brewing from the house of TVS, this massively contributing to overall pre-launch conversation and earned engagement. We also leveraged paid media for our 4 teaser videos to target the right audience. The media campaign surpassed the planned numbers and provided greater results for the same amount of investments. Reach - 15.2 Crore Earned Engagement - 1487000 Net Sentiment Score - 9.5 Mentions - 1917 92 Lacs video views for teasers across all platforms, which was 135% higher than planned 3 Cr impressions delivered for teaser ads 70 Lacs & 1.3 Cr users reached on Youtube and Facebook respectively Launch Our launch happened via YT LIVE stream, in which keeping audiences engaged could be challenge; however, received some impressive results for a digital launch: Total Views: 5.6 Lakhs 22K clicks diverted traffic to the Live Youtube event via Facebook, which was attended by 5K users at its peak. We also handed 12 vouchers to our LIVE stream audience, and a grand prize to those who gave the best one-line description for the motorcycle: the #TheWickedRide became the top trending hashtag leading to the following results: Total Tweets: 4,827 Unique Contributors: 1,631 Total Impression: 24,705,925 Total Reach: 12,127,320 Trend Duration: National (4+ hours) So the overall launch results surpassed many of our key competitors: Reach - 5.73 Crores ( 57.3 Million ) Earned Engagement - 62 Lakhs (6.2 Million) Net Sentiment Score - 9.9 Brand recall - 70x Mentions - 7472 This was a campaign of many ‘firsts'. It was the first time TVS as a brand had gone ahead with an innovative digital - first campaign launch. It was the first time Indian audiences
