Mahindra XUV500

Mahindra-Rise is a new theme and marketing campaign for Mahindra. What is it?  It could be CSR or A program for the growth of customers, An initiative to grow Globally or to match with the growing aspirations of the Youth of the country.

One thing is for sure, all marketing campaigns communicate brand promise and here Mahindra promised its customers a product that is loved by all, Mahindra-XUV500. This Campaign marked by the launch of very dashing XUV and one of the cheapest in its segment is an indication of an aggression of the company.

Inspired by the mighty cheetah in terms of designing, Mahindra XUV 500 is in a huge demand. The first phase of booking was closed and waiting time has gone as high as 8 months in some cities. Now, happy times have come again for the customers who don't want to miss all inclusive higest version of XUV priced at 13.5 Lacs INR, The company has opened booking for 10 days and in case number of bookings exceed 7,200 then with the help of draw lucky customers will be chosen. What a better strategy to attract customers, simple case of demand and supply. Though Company sources have confirmed that this limited supply is because of MHAWK engines, which is used in Scorpio also. People can definitely compare this situation with that of iphone releases worldwide.

The company is trying its best to dominate the market not only with aggressive pricing but also with digital campaigns. Mahindra became one of the first companies in India to use Augmented reality to showcase its product. 3d virtual Cheetah was hit among the visitors and marketers in the current Auto Expo, India's largest Auto Expo show,


Time has come for Indigenous brands like Tata and Mahindra to take multinational companies head on with the better product, better pricing and with the best marketing campaigns.
That's the Rise of the company and the society

Roadblock advertising

RoadBlock Advertising is going to be back in action soon. It is a powerful means of advertising and brands use it for different purposes.

The word roadblock is derived from the traffic roadblock, where the traffic is jammed on the road and people can’t see anything and get struck at one point. Similarly in Roadblock advertising, brands books advertisement slot for 24 hours  or couple of days and air their advertisements all the time.

There are lot of benefits like when some company wants to launch a new brand, in order to get 100% voice share, ads are aired all the time.  This is predominantly a TV medium but now print media and also online websites are capitalising this. In Nov, 2009 Volkswagen is reportedly paid 100 million rupees to TOI and published its advertisement in all TOI newspapers and in all cities. This was received with both positive and negative response as this was the first time that print media has moved towards to road block advertisement. But in one shot and by paying hefty amount more than 20 million viewers get to see Volkswagen new Jetta and Pasat cars. Since this is not a targeted medium of advertisement, one tend to lose lot of money but it is worthwhile gaining lot of eyeballs.

In a similar campaign in 2009 HUL roadblocked Star network and Zee network for 24 hours so which meant on all 25 network channels of ZEE, viewer will get to see only HUL brands. As the FMCG space is cluttered and fragmented. The move of airing advertisements for HUL brands was thus impactful, as the brands in question will get exposure on as many as 25 channels and 24 hours.

Recently, pizza chain Papa John's ran a roadbloack ad on Facebook promoting a free pizza for every user who became a fan of the brand on its Facebook Page. Thanks to the home page ad and an associated e-mail campaign, Papa John's garnered 131,000 new fans in a single day.

Following are the main features of roadblock advertising     

• 100% share of voice during the campaign period
• Can be booked for a single date, multiple days or for a week
•  Runs multiple ad units
•  Uses Rich media and creative formats are available

Now we will not be surprised if Star roadblocks its entire network to launch its new channel Star Action. Star is largely popular in Youth, Housewives and entertainment oriented audience. In order to get 100% voice share it is expected that Star will roadblock all its network channels, which is in way a good medium to launch new product/ brand .