How excited are you about the India Bike Week 2016?
We at Shell are extremely
happy to be part of this entire event. What more can be happier for a brand
manager and a marketing head to be amongst a group of 12,000 passionate consumers?
As a brand you are always looking at how you are going to get to your consumer,
how you get to the most discerning and most passionate consumer and what you
see around here is the passion flowing and we want to be with them in their
journey. Hence, we are happy that we are sponsoring it and we are part of this
entire experience.
How are you able to convey to a motorcyclist here that your product is
the best for their motorcycles?
We have not just used this as
the platform, we started engaging with them almost four to five months in
advance when this event was getting curated. They have these biking clubs all
over India. We were part of their Sunday long rides which we are sponsoring, and
during the chai panis and pakora rides we could talk to them,
answer their technical queries, thus there was a lot of pre work we had done. We
have also used a lot of social media where the bikers could recommend the best
mechanic they had worked with. So we got them talking about their most
favourite mechanic and based on that we shortlisted the top ten mechanics in
the country and we are also rewarding them.
This is something very unique because mechanic is someone who is a key
partner and an influence in the journey. We have also used their entire friends
circle and asked them to post passionate stories of biking and the people who
are biking. We got a lot of response for that and we shortlisted the top
stories and we are rewarding them also. There is a lot of pre-activity that has
happened.
When the consumer is walking
in here we are trying to provide him the entire experience, they get their
RFIDs, take selfies, they can do their power, do a dyno test where they can
actually test the power of their bike; we want to show them that the product we
are launching—the 15W50 oil--- gives the best viscosity for 300cc bikes and
above. The power does not deteriorate between the two oil drain intervals. Most
of the competitive oils would have a deterioration of power along the ODI. That
is something our scientists have worked on—it has Gas to Liquid (GTL)
technology and it has active cleansing agent which only Shell has. Both these
have been patented by us. We are giving out a lot of coupons and free trials at
amazon. Our fundamental belief is that once the consumer tries the product, we
are more than 100pc confident that the person will convert. So it is about
giving them the experience over here to really say that our brands stand for
power. We shall also be doing a lot of post engagement with these groups, so it
is really not a one-time engagement.
What about your association with IBW?
This is the second time we are
sponsoring them. This event is getting bigger. This is not really about are we
making an ROI or are we getting our break even or not. What we truly believe in
is that we want to be there where our consumers are. We are ready to invest in
this community for a couple of years so that we grow with their journey. The
organisation of the event has been a very positive experience. We feel that our
consumers are also rewarding us back so we feel it is a very fulfilling journey
and we want to continue this partnership.
As a senior marketing person, how critical is the role of the digital
world in pushing things ahead?
If you look at this event as
an example, there is no above the line, there is no radio, very little print,
which is why we come to a few PR and journalists like you. Where our spending
is, it is either on BTL, Below the Line, which is the event itself or digital.
These are the only two places we are spending the entire money. This gives a
glimpse into how much passionate we are in terms of changing with the times,
changing with how the consumer is moving. We have mapped the consumer journey s
to when is he looking for a product, when is he seeking relevant information
about it, when is he trying to get more data on the product, which sites is he
going to, which friends is he calling, which social media site is where he is
curating his information etc. We have done almost nine months study with
digital consumers to really see where they are present and what is the
information they are looking for.