Is Tata Motors behind the Buildadreamcar.com campaign?

A teaser ad campaign to promote Buildadreamcar.com has been live on the internet for the past few days. The website enables visitors to design and assemble a virtual car from scratch

A banner ad titled 'Build a dream car' is live across various websites, including Zigwheels.com, Carwale.com, Linkedin.com, Moneycontrol.com, as well as the Google content network.

When clicked, the banner ad redirects the user to a website, Buildadreamcar.com.

The website is like an online workshop, where users will find more than 500 car parts and accessories, which can be utilised to design and build (assemble) a virtual car from scratch and earn points in the process.

To develop the car, which is a five-stage process, the user has to register on the website and clear various stages. In the first stage, the user is provided with basic car parts (such as engine, gear-box and tyres), which need to be fixed accurately in the skeleton/chassis in order to move to the next stage. In the later stages, the user is asked to bring together various interior and exterior parts of the vehicle, choose special accessories and select a colour for the car.

Once the car building process is complete, the user is asked to write a review of the vehicle. The user who earns maximum points will be awarded a free holiday trip.

Surprisingly, neither the banner ads nor the website reveal the name of the advertiser. However, the development of the site is credited to Mumbai-based digital agency, Experience Commerce.

When afaqs! contacted Sandip Maiti, chief executive officer of Experience Commerce, to find out the name of the advertiser, Maiti said, "We can't divulge the name of advertiser at the moment."

He reveals, "The site is actually a teaser campaign -- targeted towards automobile enthusiasts -- launched by a leading automobile manufacturer last week, to create buzz about its upcoming vehicle. The advertiser will reveal its identity on its own."

Despite the confidentiality maintained by the digital agency, it is not a tough task to decode the brand behind the teaser campaign.

A close scan of forum discussions across automobile portals such as Team-Bhp.com and Cararzoo.com, combined with a search on Google search for the keyword, 'Buildadreamcar' indicates that Buildadreamcar.com is associated with Tata Motors' upcoming car, Tata Aria, which is a cross between an SUV and an MUV. The car is expected to be launched in October.

Maiti, however, declined to comment on the forum discussions and search results.

Has the site gained traction? The digital agency claims that 6,000 people have started using the site to build a dream car. Of that, about 90 per cent have registered through e-mail IDs, while the rest have accessed the site through the Facebook Connect option. The average time spent on the site is seven minutes.

To get this traction, the advertiser has already served more than 50 lakh banner ad impressions on various websites. A Facebook brand page, which has gathered more than 500 fans, has also been created.

As per an industry estimate, the advertiser (Tata Motors) must have already spent up to Rs 10 lakh on website development and the banner ad campaign.