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 Outdated.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
- To launch TVS Raider, the newest commuter motorcycle from the house of TVS Motors - To ensure thatTVS Raideris positioned in a manner that appeals to the millennials and the GenZ, and make accelerate its popularity amongst them - To redefine the ‘cool quotient' for the TG through the launch product and showcase TVS Raider's association with being ‘WICKED' (To be distinctively cool/Have swag) - To highlight the distinct features, stylish personality, first-in-class model, and uniqueness of TVS Raider that make this newest bike stand out amongst its competitors. - Leverage the digital native behaviour of the TG to drive strong engagement for the launch and establish the desired positioning (as stated above)
Strategy
The campaign was executed in three phases - Pre-launch, Launch and Post Launch. For each of the phases, a unique strategy was devised to include and highlight the bike's cool quotient and ‘wickedness'. 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 to the idea/campaign. Due to the pandemic, people were extensively spending time watching content on YouTube. Hence, YouTube became our preferred platform for the e pre-launch and launch phases. Pre-launch Phase: An Unexpected Review 1.0 Review videos on the internet have become the norm. However, in the automobile sector, these reviews often happen after the product has been launched.. So, we decided to introduce this one-of-a-kind bike with reviews that happened BEFORE the launch. But there was a catch! In the reviews,we didn't showcase the bike, but highlighted its features that piqued the curiosity of - motorcycle buffs! Furthermore, audiences extensively follow and watch content created by their favourite YouTube creators. So, we leveraged the followers of well-known creators and collaborated with the likes of Scout, Mortal, Aki D Hot Pistonz, Jagdish Chaturvedi, Soul Regaltos, etc to widespread our reach amongst the targeted audience. And to be able to do that, we mapped the demographics of their follower base and ensured that our brand advocates' had a well versed ‘share of voice' across the key two-wheeler markets. . To further fuel the ongoing excitement of the launch, we rolled out 4 teaser videos. Launch: For the first time ever, the TVS Motors brand was launching a bike on digital. It had to be anything but massive! . This was India's first ever LIVE stream bike launch! We collaborated with 12 influencers that streamed the Live Launch Event via their respective
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. Hence,chose it as our primary platform for the pre-launch and launch phases. Moreover, we realized that beyond the social media platforms we would find them on gaming apps (Ludo King) and automobile aggregator sites (BikeDekho, ZigWheels). So, we integrated them in our creative and media strategy. 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 are 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 taking a generic approach of getting Influencers to give cliched and simple reviews, we created intrigue by showing snapshots of the product without actually showing the product. This enabled us to garner 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 our influencers the bike in a massive box and getting them to actually unbox and review it. This made the entire launch look larger than life. 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 instead 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
