MARKETING STRATEGY OF CEAT

CEAT - PROMOTING THE BRAND THROUGH 'GRIP' FACTOR

Running a 360 – degree campaign, CEAT is busy engaging with the consumers – from digital to on-ground activation. They plan to take forward the ‘idiot’ idea that empowers a person to come out and speak openly about the problems they come face-to-face in life, on road.

In its 360 degree campaign, CEAT goes out to engage the customer covering the gamut of media options like digital to on-ground promotion. CEAT spends about Rs. 40-45 crores a year on marketing, out of which one third is the spend on ATL & the rest is focused on BTL.

The CEAT Bike Tyres TVC tells a story of a biker as a protagonist, how he encounters various idiotic acts on the road and barely survives disaster, but still ends up taking the blame from ‘idiots’ or people at large.

The ongoing Ad campaign created by Ogilvy & Mather is supported by a strong digital initiative (www.beidiotsafe.com) and social media campaign (www.facebook.com/beidiotsafe). CEAT tied up with CCD to promote the campaign through their outlets. They associated with various programs like Roadies on MTV to integrate the campaign idea. They also ran contests through all these medium to engage consumers and gave away interesting merchandize.

MARKETING STRATEGY:

CEAT’s main promotional activities include on-ground consumer meets for commercial segments, digital platforms focusing on cricket & the beidiotsafe site, Safety Zone activity for school kids, consumer touchpoints like Café Coffee Day , petrol pumps & malls. They also conduct influencer programs for mechanics & retreaders. CEAT Cricket Rating and India Road Transportation Awards is a big frame for them.

PR is about building credibility for CEAT. They leverage PR for their major consumer connect initiatives like CEAT PRO, CCR, India Road Transportation Awards, Safety Zones at schools, etc.

Speaking on their marketing strategy Vinod Kumar, GM, Marketing, CEAT Ltd.said, “Our strategy is to connect with the latent needs of our consumers, whether in the commercial segment or in the passenger segment. For example we have CEAT PRO knowledge seminars which address the needs of transport fleets with respect to running their businesses profitable, we have the beidiotsafe campaign which addresses the issue of road safety of bike riders & we have the CEAT Shoppe Safety Zone which teaches safe road habits to school children. We believe that our brand must help our consumers in doing their businesses better or helping them in leading a better, safer life.

We are also bullish about the digital space since that is where we can meaningfully connect with the youth. We regularly engage with youth through social media & through our brand platforms like www.beidiotsafe.com .

Our product strategy also focuses on giving our consumers premium, longer lasting tyres. Thus our entire thrust is in promoting these sets of tyres”.

THE 'IDIOT' QUOTIENT :

Post this campaign the sales for CEAT increased by 40-45% and they expect a similar growth for the next 2-3 quarters.
Anup Chitnis,ECD, Ogilvy&Mather, on the concept of the campaigns said, “ It’s a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ campaign, made from the biker’s prospective. Since the ‘idiot’ campaign was working for CEAT and the client was quite happy with it hence we continued with the same concept as we thought that it still had potential”.

Kumar, on the same said, “Our insight was: People on Indian roads have a very poor sense of traffic rules. A biker comes across many such people on road, unexpectedly and their idiotic behavior that actually put the biker’s life at tremendous risk. While the biker is aware of this threat, he can do little to feel safe on his bike.” He added, “The pain that each biker goes through everyday due to this menace was unattended for long, and the product seemed to fill that need gap. This opportunity presented us with a thought to empower biker with our product which would help him feel safe on roads. Hence, the campaign was launched to showcase the product feature (Grip) as a solution to his real time problem and establish the brand as the most relevant tyre brand to the biker”.