The luxury car brand, Volvo, has chalked out an investment worth Rs. 15 crore this year, which is mainly dedicated towards the marketing activities of the company, on out-of-home sourcing and on-ground events. According to Director, Marketing and Public Relations (PR), Volvo Auto India, Sudeep Narayan, the car maker would not use Television Commercial now as a mode of publicity, but will be focussing on the niche journals. He said, “Our marketing budget for the year is about Rs. 15 crore, which is about seven per cent of the luxury car segment.” He further added, “When you are actually running a steeplechase or a 400 metres race, you start slow and gradually gain momentum. We are in that phase when we are gaining momentum.”
On Volvo's strategy to employ magazines, Narayan said, “We target niche magazines and ask them for their database. This database is further filtered to find out CEOs, CFOs, SMEs, doctors and lawyers who are top in their field. And there's a communication within communication to reach out to this audience.” According to him, investing in the mainline media is just wastage of resources since the share of luxury car segment is only a per cent in India.
On the other hand, luxury cars enjoy around 8 to 10 per cent market share in developed countries. While in India, out of 20 lacs passenger vehicles sold in 2011, only 23,000 units were accounted for luxury cars. However, there is still a hope as the new entry-level launches in the segment are more on the affordable side as the starting price in the same has come down to Rs. 25 lacs from Rs. 30 lacs.
Narayan hopes that the sales volume in the domestic market will surge to 40 lac units every year by 2020 out which 1.5 lacs units will be dedicated to luxury cars. On this he said, “We sold 326 cars last year and we are hoping to sell 800 cars this year and doubling it every year, taking the number to 15,000 by 2020, which is as big as Japan.”
Volvo is sharply targeting its outdoor advertising to enhance the brand recall in India. However, there are fewer advertising spots of Volvo in Mumbai and Delhi, as Narayan explains, instead of investing in dozens of hoarding at insignificant locations, company is placing its banners at strategic spots.
Volvo has been advertising on the internet as well but in a very limited scope. Volvo has subscribed for space on several portals and doles out around Rs. 2 lacs annually on the subscriptions.
The company also is also using the mode of communications to elite travellers with first class airline tickets who are travelling between India and Europe. Another initiative by the car maker is to organise golf championship. Narayan revealed, “We are also present at the Lakme Fashion Week, which brings us another five per cent of HNIs, we are targeting. We also do golf events, where we get the trophy made by a top designer, instead of buying it off-the-shelf.” Recently, Volvo signed Ritu Beri to design jackets, which will be presented to the winners of the golf championship.
