The car advertising in India

Are consumers buying a car or are they buying a brand? Are brands locked in mere functional objectivities?

Since liberalization, the Indian car industry has witnessed the entry of a large number of automobile brands. As increased competition eventually rallies price equality, product and brand value propositions become key to selling strategies. In India, car brands are sold only on functional constructs and have somewhat fallen short on delineating strong, powerful brand constructs. Brands are grappling with functional or value differentiators at best leveraged to emotional benefits. Is there a force of constraint that limits brands or does the category need a finer understanding?

At one level, the Indian car industry is still at a very nascent stage with a large number of the middle class still acquiring their first car ever. The middle class has entered the consumerism era and the fascination for features and functional efficiency are the dominant parameters of luxury. Buying a car is practical indulgence. Most successful brands in the category have leveraged their strengths confined within functional constructs and this is true of all segments….be it entry level or top end premium segments. From a Maruti 800 to a Skoda or even a Honda Accord are relying on their inherent product strengths in positioning themselves. The obsession with feature driven benefits limits brands from exploring stronger brand ideologies outside the territory of functional benefits. How can brands really carve a space of their own that emerges outside the pure functional benefits? And at the end of the day, are we selling features or are we creating a brand?

Every car has an instinctive character of its own that comes from its design. If cars are a reflection of the owner’s identity, the identity needs to take its roots from the car itself and not the imagined owner. The different components of design, form, exteriors, interiors, all interact in a manner that collectively form a spirit of the automobile which should be brought to life. Brands need to unlock themselves from reducing the whole to parts and instead define the collective spirit of the automotive. In doing so, we can transform the language of the machine to a human spirit. This spirit identified will insinuate metaphorical associations that form the basis of a brand ideology. When a brand carves an ideology for itself, it professes a belief and philosophy of life which has more powerful social and cultural meanings than a singular emotional payoff. Brands need to enlarge the canvas of thought.

The traditional Indian mindset, known to be obsessive with time references of the past and the future, is changing. With increasing opportunities, rising incomes have short-circuited aspirations, bringing dreams closer to reality. Market dynamics of loans and credit cards have made it possible for us to believe in life today. We are increasingly living in the present. As car models are designed and re-designed to meet contemporary aesthetic codes, Indian car advertising has failed to capture cars as symbolic references of fashion and style statements. Cars are sensational and have drool value, but brands have instead characterized the aesthetics into a lifestyle statement. The increasing culture of accessorizing cars is a statement of style, and not of lifestyle. The difference in fashion versus lifestyle lies in the reference of time. While fashion is the expression of a person’s identity today, lifestyle embodies aspirations of tomorrow. India is metamorphosing into a world of aesthetics. The Indian consumer is being driven to consciously appreciate aesthetic form. From the glamour of shopping malls to fashion in Bollywood to modern café outlets, experience through ambience and aesthetic appeal has exposed the Indian consumer to the design culture. Brands need to align with the inherent sensational language of the category and infuse codes of fashion and aesthetics, which seem to be missing from current car advertising. While this need not be central to the core ideology, the brand personality that it will evoke plays a critical role for imagery associations and aspirations.

Lastly, every brand needs to be put to test. We rely too much on research and as a consequence brands have become only a reflection of consumer mind states. We need to understand that brands can occupy a special space in consumers’ lives by filling a gap, by being the inspirational ideology of the times and not a mere code of association. Music and religion have that power because they fill gaps in a culture’s philosophy and brands must aspire to achieve that stature.