When KIA Motors began selling Seltos in August 2019, the marketing operations had already begun in March 2018. Shakti Upadhyay, Head – Marketing & PR, KIA India said, “The very reason why a person buys an SUV is that it makes him feel confident. The whole insight behind Seltos was that the good are always remembered, but the badass are never forgotten. Standing true to that insight, we could create the first brand, which was Seltos.”
Edited Excerpts
Could you chart out the five-year journey of KIA India?
In 2018, when we entered India, we were a fairly new automobile brand and the kind of awareness levels for KIA India were very low. The awareness of KIA was in some of the people who would be travelling abroad around that time. In India, it was less than one percent, which is what we started gauging through our brand tracks when it started in May 2018.
Whenever a brand comes to the country, it’s a big challenge that everyone has to make a bed for the things to come for the brand to be launched. But at the same time, it can also be a boon which is what we felt because if you have to start building awareness right from level zero, then there are certain nuances that can be built to build up the overall brand within the country which is what we call the ethos of the brand. So we studied the Indian target audience.
The segment where we were going to make entry was mid-SUVs and we tried to find out those nuances which would help us design the overall ethos of the brand on which we can give a strong foundation to KIA.
Going back to the drawing board, we had been globally acclaimed for the designs that KIA makes and that was one of the biggest strengths that the brand had. Therefore we decided to launch the brand on the premise of the most well designed cars and that was the overall positioning that we crafted.
Therefore, the KIA brand building operations started in 2018 itself. We leveraged our global sponsorships of the Australian Open and official match ball carriers in FIFA.
Along with that, we started creating stories around how KIA global cars are the best in terms of designs. We were giving experiences of our global product opinion leaders in automobiles including the journalists and some of the bloggers. So, we in a way started creating organic word-of-mouth around KIA before the big product launch in 2019.
Now, how you define design is very subjective. Design is what people when they look at the car think about it. But there are different nuances of design which can be taken forward in terms of creating a user personality. That is what we started working on when we were launching the first product, which was Seltos.
There were three core things after setting up the ethos of the brand on design, the most well-designed cars, a global automaker, the three core pillars on which the entire KIA brand has been built. So, the first one is content.
Content that engages with the new-age target audience. Second is the power of the screen, which is obviously TV being one of them, but the second one being mobile, which is always in your hands. And the third one, being a new brand, how we could create trust with progressive PR because that is something that gives a lot of confidence to the people.
Now, we have a lot of customers. And we were entering into a Rs 15 lakh segment, which is definitely very aspirational as we looked at the image of the Indian automobile industry, which was the first product Seltos.
There was a lot of selling which was happening on rationale and more product selling which was happening. There was a big gap in creating a brand that could personify what consumers want from a mid SUV. And that is where we could hit the sweet spot with Seltos.
The very reason why a person buys an SUV is that it makes him feel confident. The whole insight behind Seltos was that the good are always remembered, but the badass are never forgotten. Standing true to that insight, we could create the first brand, which was Seltos.
We pointed it back to the whole DNA of the KIA brand, which was design. And that’s why the positioning of Seltos badass by design came into the picture. Now how the content was created that engages with the target audience was developed by looking into the unmet needs and the unfulfilled aspirations of the consumer with regards to the SUVs.
While most of the SUVs are liberated, here was a product that would straight away speak to them in a very frank language that being in a Seltos, you may feel bold. You may be mean, but at the same point in time, you are righteous, which is what people need. So that particular content culminated across all the screens, which was digital, television, newspapers and on PR, how we created a story about the Seltos development that gave us the edge in terms of Seltos.
And then we utilised the power of the screens to always engage with the consumers for the entire journey.
How important is India as a market for KIA India and who are the competitors?
India within KIA Corporation, has a total contribution of about 10 percent. India is definitely one of the growth engines that Kia looks at. The kind of success that KIA brand has achieved within the last six years in the country has been phenomenal. In fact, we are proud to be rated as one of the most successful late entrants in the industry.
In terms of competition, we are primarily in the recreational vehicle (RV) segment where we are present in mid SUVs, which is with Seltos. We are present in low SUVs with Sonet. There is a specific category of RV, which is between MPVs and SUVs, which is where Carance is present.
And then we have just started testing the waters with our global premium EV, which is the EV6. In terms of competition, Seltos has a major competition set, which is a very crowded segment of Creta, then Maruti models, Toyota Hyryder etc.
In the case of Carens, it is a very peculiar product. Carens gets numbers from both SUVs and MPVs because it’s a three-row car. The brand pitch for Carens was created as a big size vehicle, which has the toughness of an SUV. And inside, you carry your world in a Carens. So it’s a good space for a new-age family.
Because of that, it competes with XUV700 and Safaris at the top end. While at the bottom end, it competes with XL6 and Ertiga. So this is the broad competition set that we have.
How has the target audience evolved over a period?
One of the most dynamic things these days is the target audience. In fact, there would be a new trend developing within minutes as we have just started talking to each other. The biggest thing is how you look at the target audience in terms of just wanting to sell him or her a product. Then obviously mobility is a need that has always been there. If people want a car with a good engine and four tyres, there will be a lot of competition.
In fact, all the cars which are available are the latest and technologically advanced. But we look at it from a completely different perception of value or volume.
Now, when we look at the value target audience, people who are ready to pay extra for products are the ones, the demand generation for such an audience evolves around creating a special feeling of owning the brand. And that is where KIA has been really aspirational since day one. The kind of imagery that we have tried to create is how a person would feel as he comes out of a Seltos versus other cars.
Now, that is the exact reason why today Seltos is considered to be very aspirational because we have targeted the tip of the iceberg. The people who are really dynamic are very social and their aspirations are high.
But we have been evolving with them as a brand in terms of the communication that we create, in terms of the way we target them. The product has been evolving. How Seltos has been developed over the last six years. With every enhancement, we have had an opportunity to make them feel more special, to give them something extra.
For example, the latest campaign that we did was the Badass 2.0 where we kind of repositioned Seltos as one of the most advanced in terms of software technologies like ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems), etc when we spoke to people about how the brand has evolved, how the brand has grown from Badass 1.0 to Badass 2.0. In terms of audience, they will always keep on evolving. So, I would say every marketer has to innovate every minute and transform with them.
Which has been the most useful marketing strategy for KIA India that has helped it sail through competitive waves?
One of the most useful marketing strategies for KIA India that has helped it sail through competitive waves is the combination of content and how you communicate. We speak to the consumer like a friend.
And digital gives that opportunity to us. It’s brilliant where we create content which resonates with them, content which is really aggressive and speaks with them throughout the year with moment marketing.
How we communicate with them is also the second part. Now, creating content which is relevant to the audience is very important. It is about how you feel while you use Kia products or while you aspire for a Kia product is something that we keep on communicating.
The entire content that has been created on brand has been really edgy where we have gone to the dark sides of it as well.
Launching the first product itself after approximately $1.5 billion investment and calling it a ‘badass’ was something which was a real big step which we could take.
When all the marketers of SUVs in the country were all wearing white gowns in a room speaking about ’I am the brightest, I am the whitest, I am the most righteous’. There comes a guy in a black robe. He comes in and he says that, ‘I am bad and I am the badass’.
So, that was one of the biggest distinctions that we created. And then, how to redefine that word across the screens with the content that we create on digital through ATL (Above the line) advertising, where the engagement with the target audience is such that they just can’t get enough of it in terms of the content. We personally feel that the biggest enemy of a marketer today is their thumb. If the kind of content that is created is thumb friendly, that is the need of the hour.
What is your take on celebrity endorsements and influencer marketing as a tool to promote the brand?
It’s very difficult to find someone who can be the perfect endorser of your brand. Because we personally feel that a product and the endorser have to have strands which are tied together where they complement each other so wonderfully.
If it’s style, which is what the product has, then the endorser has to complement it with the right kind of style. The same goes with the influencers as well. So, I would say we have been really choosy in terms of doing specific influencer activities around our brands.
We believe more in quality and less in quantity. We won’t go by the endorser’s number of followers that he or she has. If this person speaks positively about the product, what would he or she feel? What would he or she see? And is that going to be credible? So, that is the biggest filter that we take on in terms of the influencers as such.
Coming to celebrities, when we were entering with Seltos, we wanted to create a little bit of noticeability. But at the same time, we were also thinking that the celebrity shouldn’t overshadow the product. We took it across to digital and in PR (public relations) also. And we created a lot of conversations around them.
Now, coming to the current Seltos. We are at a stage where we have just onboarded Bobby Deol.
For this particular campaign, he emulated a persona that we wanted for Seltos. He is an alpha male, and his personality is overall demeanour. The kind of impact that he has generated with some of his latest engagements is fantastic. That’s the true definition of the word badass that comes to mind.
Could you further explain the marketing and brand strategy behind Sonet, Seltos and Carens?
Let me start with Carens. We have been in the RV segment business. That’s what we call recreational vehicles which includes bigger cars like SUVs and MPVs. In the case of Carens, when we were discussing how to bring Carens, we looked at the automobile audience, preferably male since they were the primary buyers of the car.
Recently, we have seen some brands targeting women as well. But for the first time, we felt that for Carens, a family of seven would travel very comfortably. Therefore, we targeted new-age families with Carens. Then, we did some engagements on digital.
Sonet is a very aggressive segment, is the cheapest and sits in a very competitive segment where some of them are Indian and old in terms of their experience. And some of them are new entrants. With the last campaign that we did, our brand strategy has been to create relevance to the youngest aspirants of an SUV to make an entry level into the KIA brand and create strong relevance with the features of the car which are new age.
We created a series with a young millennial couple on digital. It’s a seven to eight film series where we projected how Sonet is a part of their lives. And how the millennials love this particular product.
I would say it’s a younger Seltos with a similar TG, and creating relevance to the youngest owners of SUVs.
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