Hero MotoCorp’s Chandrasekhar Radhakrishnan talks about brand building in EV segment

The company has kicked off its first brand campaign, with an outdoor installation, print and digital ads.

Hero MotoCorp has launched its first ever electric scooter - the Vida V1. To mark the occasion, the company teamed up with Wieden+Kennedy to launch a campaign spanning Delhi, Bengaluru and Jaipur. The campaign’s tagline, ‘Make Way’, has been created by Wieden’s new office in Delhi.

The campaign is live online as well as offline. The launch of the vehicle was accompanied by an outdoor installation at DLF CyberHub, Gurugram.  The Hero Vida V1 is available in two variants - the V1 Plus and V1 Pro, which are priced at Rs 1.45 lakh and Rs 1.59 lakh respectively.

Over a video call, Chandrasekar Radhakrishnan, head of business growth (emerging mobility), Hero MotoCorp, mentions that the intent behind the tagline (‘Make Way’) was to drive change and create an inclusive brand.

“A truly global brand resonates with customers from Bengaluru to Bogotá, Delhi to Dhaka, and Lucknow to London. Vida is a distinct brand powered by Hero MotoCorp and the endeavour is to create something truly global.” 

Radhakrishnan says that the company isn’t in a rush to be the first brand in the market, but it wanted to get things right. “This was the brief to Wieden too. This is where the creative line of ‘Not India’s first electric scooter’ came from.”

He adds that the first campaign wanted to highlight how rigorously it has been tested - for almost 2 lakh hours with around 1,006 prototypes. “One of the conversations we had, while speaking to the agency, was about how we can bring these numbers to life. That’s why we created the outdoor installation in Gurugram, which had all the prototypes, spare parts, scooter types, etc. This is to reinforce that we would rather be right, than be first.”

The company wanted to use ‘Make Way’ as a point to drive change. It is a call to action for global change makers. This essentially talks about how one drives change in this ecosystem.

“We wanted to create disruption in this category, with our product offering, but we also wanted to create a complete ecosystem - complete with product, platform and after-sales services. Our platform comes to life with the digital assets we have - the website and the customer app. This is how we plan to grow the EV category, which is nascent in India,” Radhakrishnan explains.

He says that the digital assets are designed to help the customers in their journey - right from experiencing the product at experience centres, to accessing after sales services, if the customer runs into any problems with the product. 

Moreover, an engineer can service the vehicle’s problems remotely, via an app that the company has designed.

Another feature that Hero MotoCorp offers with Vida is that it allows customers to test drive the vehicle for three days, not just half-an-hour or so.

Credits:

Creative Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, India

Creative team: Santosh Padhi (Paddy), Amrish Kondurkar, Sunayna Sabharwal, Rebecca Wright,

Prakhar Khandelwal, Anirban Sengupta, Vipasha D Chauhan and Muskaan Jain

Account management team: Gautham Narayanan, Ayesha Ghosh, Aparna Battoo, Nick Gold, Joanna

Grover, Priya Meher Master and Devika Khurana

Planning team: Dan Hill, Ned Hodge, Divyanshu Bhadoria and Shweta Kaul

Media Agency: Dentsu