 Welcome back to this edition of our show from Logo to Impact. Now it is India's largest car maker by volume with sales of 1.2 lakh units just last month. Maruti Suzuki has certainly been making some bold new bets in the year gone by. First with its launch of their premium sales channel NEXA and then the second bet which is a slew of new products like the Bellino and the S-Cross and of course the slightly older Celerio which has been a volume puller for the company. Joining us on the show right now is R.S. Kulsey, he's the executive director of marketing and sales at Maruti Suzuki. Great to have you with us Mr. Kulsey and welcome to this edition of our show from Logo to Impact. Why don't you start off by telling us about your new brand campaign, Aatke Zamaneki Leap for your popular hatchback the Celerio. What's the thought and the inside that's driving this campaign? Well I would like to say that Celerio lives up to its brand promise that life takes a leap in the life of the customers and Celerio has been a game changer from that point of view. We did a research into the life of the customers who are buying our cars and what we found was that the in-depth study on Celerio customer profile indicated that it is being purchased by consumers with more progressive outlook. They are open to new technologies and they believe in doing the experimentation and they love the gizmos at the same time. All this approach is reflected in the lifestyles as well and based on these customer insights in fact we wanted to design a more consumer oriented campaign talking about this evolved progressive customer mindset. Okay so what marketing mix have you opted for with this campaign Mr. Kulsey which medium is going to be the focus of your ad spends for it? Well we are going in for integrated media mix and we have two brand new campaigns which you have already seen on television the third is about to come. Okay but I have to ask you about your digital marketing how important is it for a car brand like yours to up its investments on the digital medium right now if you can walk us through some of your recent initiatives in that space? We are going in for 360 campaigns and we are giving a lot of importance to the digital media as well and other media that we are going to use is radio outdoors and the btl activities as far as digital is concerned in India today we have about 150 million people who are using the smart phones and 93% of them are on the social media and these are people who are quite tech savvy and they are the ones who would like to go in for these you know new high technology products and I would like to mention here that we created a Solario website when we launched it and it was the first of a kind approach and we received 3.2 million website visits in a short span of less than one and a half year and about two websites are happening per month in the current scenario also we went in for diesel launch you know with the live webcasts for the first time on MSN and it was viewed by six lakh people over the last two months Mr. Kalti you've had a high octane campaign for the Bellino so what kind of ad spends have been involved in this and it really gets you the kind of impact you'd aim for did it help give sales at your nexa showrooms a boost having launched nexa channel in the first phase through s cross subsequently the Bellino was the second product and it's a premium hatchback with the high technology and and excellent say fuel mileage peat petrol model or diesel model we actually went in for a big high impact campaign on this and it had its own effect so much so that in about a month's time we got 100,000 inquiries so as many customers visited our showrooms and they looked at the product they appreciated the kind of premium treatment that we had planned to give them on the nexa showrooms also today we have 35,000 bookings of Bellino which we captured in a single month so this campaign had its desired impact and the product has been liked by the customers in a big way so if you go to see this s cross and the Bellino these are your two cars that are available only in nexa showrooms but given that Maruti Suzuki has always been seen as India's quintessential mass car maker tell us if this strategy to make it exclusive worked out for you what kind of response have you received so far well I would like to say that initially we had a challenge that customers they had apprehensions about the success of nexa channel like you rightly asked and we started with 80 showrooms while we have 1700 odd existing showrooms as well so we made a hub and spoke arrangement wherein even if there is no nexa showroom in a particular place the existing showrooms can capture the inquiries from the customer and they will like to take the customer to the nexa showroom to give him that experience so I would like to say that it's not a you know this in handicap anymore and our s cross numbers are in line with our optimistic estimates as it's a crossover and Maruti Suzuki has for the first time introduced the real crossover in its portfolio and I would like to say that it's a wonderful vehicle with all the comfort and you know sophistication of a sedan and all the ruggedness and high power of an SUV and it is certainly creating a delight to the customers people are bought in bought it and moving forward we expect that this product will take off and we will certainly touch you know higher numbers I remember in one of your recent interviews you'd said that at least 50 percent of the market is still out of your purview now we're almost five months after the next initiative has started tell us if the situation has changed on the ground well I would yes yes I would like to say that our focus on the premium segment as well as the premium customers has really increased as a result of this as I mentioned earlier we have been able to get about 35,000 bookings of Baleno and we have been able to clock an average sale of s cross as well to the tune of about 3000 per month on an average so far so certainly a customer who looks forward to premium treatment at the showroom and he embraces technology he loves digital interaction he likes pampering he looks forward to a relationship manager handling all his car related requirements through a single window so this is the you know class of customers who is actually appreciating nexa and certainly it is helping us expand our market right and if you can tell us what are some of the interesting btl activities and sales promotions that you've engineered now to increase your engagement with the consumer well lot of activities and in fact we have engaged all our field teams in carrying out the btl activities some of these being we approach the corporates wherein we organize special service camps and when say monsoon season approaches we organize service camps across the country for our customers wherein we do the tire checking brake checking and as the summer season approaches we go in for air conditioner checking and we do this kind of activities to support the customers and apart from this we organize various you know vehicle display activities at the premium malls and also we had a special truck which had been designed like a typical nexa showroom it was taken from place to place wherein at the high end say malls this was showcased to the customers and this also was equipped with google glasses wherein the customer could see the showroom in its virtual form so these are some of the activities that we you know keep doing of course wali or one of the leaders in the domestic passenger vehicle market mr khalzi how have you fed in this premium segment that you're targeting that has been a bit troublesome for the brand hasn't it well i would like to say that we are gradually evolving you see we started with the desire sedan version of a3 minus segment i would like to say where the market was limited to a few thousand numbers and today we have been able to create and develop the market wherein in the entry level sedan segment we are selling close to 24 000 vehicles per month so likewise we entered into a3 premium segment a3 plus segment through sias and today we are doing more than 5000 numbers per month so we are creating segments and gradually as the market is evolving we are moving you know upwards in terms of our products mr khalzi a lot hinges on festive season sale so tell us how the festive season has been this time in terms of sales for maruti susuki well i would like to say that festival season had been very good for us and we started preparations much in advance and it started with the onam down south wherein we had very good sales and subsequently you know in the central india western india we had ganpati festival and then navratras in the northern india and diwali so if we compare festival season to festival season we had about 17 to 18 percent growth and actually as i mentioned we started preparing for this festival season and we created a lot of festivities around our products during this period we started with our wagoner in the automatic gear shift version also we launched the eltega with the hybrid version and we also brought in hybrid version on sias and we brought in say limited editions of alto ketan as well as we introduced the swift glory a special festival edition so like this we created a lot of excitement and around our products so it was the festival season sentiment supported by the strong excitement around our products which led to this kind of growth fair enough thanks very much for joining us mr kaltzi and here's wishing you all the best for the future as well thank you we'll take a quick break now but after that when we return we break down ideas latest ad campaign and also do stay with us for that rip tickling humorous ad of the week we'll be right back