BY Malay Desai
By: Hakuhudo Percept
Two weeks back, Indian car major Maruti launched a TVC for Nexa, its new chain of retail automotive showrooms across India. Now, the same agency has launched the headliner car of the showrooms, Baleno. Returning as a ‘premium hatchback’, the Balenogets a 40-second TVC with fast-cut shots and without captions or copy. The film takes glances on its various exclusive features and winds up with the call to action that the model is exclusively available at Nexa.
Do we Like?
People of the last decade would recall Baleno, the good old sedan that would pack in your family, an uncle and the pet dog. The model vanished off roads and conversations as India’s auto giant focused on fancier sedans such as SX4 and Swift Dezire, the latter having taken off well.
Now, Baleno is back and besides its name, everything seems to have changed. If hybrid cars (hatchbacks + sedans) prove to be confusing for a certain target market, this enhanced, jazzed up hatchback arrives to pamper the family that can afford a 5-lakh-plus car that’s not a Honda.
The film cannot be viewed in totality simply because Marutihas pegged this big Diwali re-launch with that of a chain of new showrooms, Nexa. Promising to cater to the desires of the folks who don't worry about EMIs, the showrooms call themselves ‘experiences’, which is nothing new but coming from Maruti, the loyalists are already listening.
The Nexa film, launched October 15 by the same agency, might have been the first ever of its kind (an ad of an upcoming showroom, not a car!)and I found it world-class. The black-and-white was classy, the editing was cutting edge and eventually it really gave me (not really an automobile buff) a feel that Nexa is some classy car ki dukaan.
Now, the Baleno TVC might not have the same Shoppers Stop treatment but it’s been simply done. It checks the few boxes that every good auto ad (wait, with a big budget, I mean) has – stunts on electronic dance music, focus on exclusive features and a strong call to action. This one even adds the splashing of water cliché. It’s like the brief was, ‘do a cutting edge neat generic job in three days, we have other bases to cover.’ And it’s done.
The automobile game, however, puts little weightage on the TVC today, for there are other players, such as auto mags, online reviewers and auto show anchors who make or break the image of the product. With features such as Apple CarPlay among others, the ad only serves as an exciting curtain raiser.
There’s barely any social media buzz around it too, so I hope the promoters have the mettle to sell this through.
Happy Diwali!
(To watch these films, open your browser and type in ‘bit.ly/Baleno_Nexa’)
Social Newsfeed
Your regular dose on the shifts in the social media universe
Urban Ladder comes home with Piyush Mishra
The last time I featured one of my favourite old men, poet and actor Piyush Mishra, he had done a tiny but endearing role for a DVC for Oyo Rooms. Now, it seems he is the posterboy dad for more startups as online furniture seller Urban Ladder has roped him for a short film. ‘Homecoming’ during pre-Diwali season is as old an idea as Ramayan but Boring Brands, the agency has thought otherwise. Centred around an elderly couple’s decision to move to their son’s home, the film is five minutes too long for the average YouTuber today. Meanwhile, dominant rival Pepperfry is featuring real-life customer couples in simple testimonial videos. I’m still sticking to my Oshiwara furniture fellow.
FTII likes this
New FB tools for local businesses
In 2014, Facebook had launched ads which allowed local businesses to reach out to more customers. Now, Zuck is adding more features that would make it even easier to create targeted communication with relevance. One is ‘Locations for Pages,’ a tool that connects and manages pages with multiple stores. Locations will enable business to populate the city name in their ads, with call to action features such as call now and get directions. The insights will also tell businesses which outlet is performing better and how to function more effectively. Hyper local is the name of the game!
Big Bazaar likes this
Twitter hearts get a thumbs down?
It has happened as I had reported over a month ago. Twitter has rolling out ‘hearts’ to replace its stars as the favourite button. This has obviously been met with much cynicism, with purists being rigid to this change. Jack’s company of course is not doing anything new here, in fact its live streaming app Periscope works pretty seamlessly with multicoloured hearts which denote likes. The thought behind changing a star which denotes ‘favourite’ is to make the platform more consumer friendly. One blogger even thinks this is excessive PDA, ‘it feels like I’m running around New York giving everyone a hug, yuck!’ so he says! I am a Twitter purist too, Jack, and I’d like a middle path here, even though I know it ain’t going to happen.
Cardiologists likes this
