We were successful in creating BharatBenz as a brand that offers comfort, safety and reliability.

Prakhar Saxena

- Head of Marketing & HQ Operations, BharatBenz, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles

Which was the most effective product campaign of the company and what was the strategy used to reach out to the stakeholders?

In 2018, BharatBenz as a brand was predominant amongst many of the top fleet owners and early innovators in the market. The first set of products of BharatBenz that we sold in 2012 had begun crossing 10 lakh km with the power train of the vehicle intact, which meant the original engine and transmission fitted onto the vehicles had remained unchanged and demonstrated the unmatched reliability of our vehicles.

We wanted to showcase these to our customers as living proof of BharatBenz product quality and the reliability of the brand through our 'Bharat- Ka- Benz' campaign. We embarked on a journey across India and took the hero vehicles- a1015R and 3523R along with our new product portfolio. We stopped at every transport hub and, displayed our trucks, and cultivated the Indian trucking community on the brands features.

Along the way, we drew BENZ on the map of India beginning from Jaipur and the 'BharatKaBenz' yatra concluded in Chennai after completing a pan-Indian journey of 10,000 km over 40 days.

We used many mediums to promote the campaign from print ads in top magazines, radio promotions in major markets across India- to promote 'no honking'as our social message as part of the campaign. We also used, out-of-home hoardings at major transport hubs highlighting our product capability. This was supported by with an all-outon ground implementation and complimented by a strong digital campaign on our social media handles.

What kind of market survey was done for the promotion of the product?

We did an exhaustive initial survey to understand the important geographical nodes present in the transport industry. We then focused on our target markets and audience, which included decision makers as well as the driver community.  This let us design a bottom up strategy to reach and interact with our potential customers and also use this a as a platform to communicate the brand's reliability through our 'kilometer millionaire' vehicle,

What were the challenges faced while marketing the brand?

The team did face challenges during the entire project, such as tracking the response numbers to the mediums used, tweaking content to optimize the reach to the maximum. The constant juggling of the team present on ground, so that the implementation of the project for 38 days and more than 10,000 km of travelling with the products and connecting with customers was unhindered.

We were successful in creating BharatBenz as a brand that offers the India CV customer the best total-cost-of ownership, comfort, safety and reliability.This makes BharatBenz an aspirational brand for the India trucker.

Hits: 1026