Nano Marketing

In 2008-09, almost everybody who had heard about it was shrieking praises for the new car from India's Tata Motors - the Nano. Broadcast, print and blogger wags from Delhi to Denver were using words like 'phenomenal,' 'innovative,' 'game changer,' 'palpable excitement,' etc, etc, - not just to describe the car - but the marketing behind it.

They called it, Lakhtakiya -  'the people's car.'

It was good but small and cheap - about $2000 USD each - and so, raved the marketing folks, would be the marketing campaign. Innovative, effective and inexpensive they said. Frugal engineering built the car. Frugal marketing would sell it. So they elected to use all the innovative stuff. A Bloomberg article at the time explains: "No TV - rather, innovative use of other stuff, like Nano news in papers, Nano breaks on radio, Nano appearing in the form of messages or ticker news on TV, online Nano games, Nano chatrooms on the Net, Nano pop-ups on major websites and Nano conversation on Facebook, Orkut and blogspaces." They even planned to sell the Nano through chain department stores rather than just dealerships.

Sales volume was projected to average 20,000 vehicles per month and Tata built a factory to produce exactly that.

According to a recent article in The Economist as of now, monthly unit sales are currently 3,000  per month and that up from a low point of 509 per month in November 2010. This in India - an emerging market and maybe THE emerging market - with a billion people, 750 million of which are actually thought to be potential buyers.

Let's review the plan:

Product? Check. Frugal engineering hath wrought a beautiful, innovative little car undoubtedly fitting its marketplace.
Price? Check. $2000 each puts it well within reach of the rising middle class but more importantly, that of many poorer citizens.
Place? Check. Certainly there are dealerships and department stores.
Promotion? Check. No TV but lots of innovative other stuff, particularly Web stuff... and a very flashy launch event or two.
People? huh? Are people part of marketing?

Why, yes they are. They are the real stakeholders in the brand. And apparently Tata forgot that. Or at least one important group of them. They educated and enthused their employees, the media, the government, the financial analysts, the retailers - but the 750 million key stakeholders in their brand success - the candidates for actually buying the brand - the poor - their target customers - were unable to learn about the car or see the car or get enthused about the car because they didn't have access to all the innovative media that Tata relied on. You see they live out of the city lights... in the rural areas where Nano-chats and Nano-games, etc., are Nano-known.

The people do not yet know about their car.

Moral: when marketing to the people, do not forget them.