Gathering from the over 1200 entries for the contest recently initiated by Tata Motors, the Indica V@ Xeta Shootout website has been a very good initiative and deserving of the mantle that is a first for allowing participants to win a car by making it’s television commercial!
While the contest winner, Insha Kapoor, a young Arts student, will win a brand new Indica V2 Xeta, the runner ups, Vivek Tetwilkar and Sagar Kapoor will soon be listening to their favorite music on their new iPods! Insha came up with an excellent commercial starring her and her sibling!
Off late, the concept—intertwining viewer participation and the interactivity, is gaining popularity. As an extension of its long-running ‘You Gotta Be Dumb’ TV commercial, Tata Motors launched their online contest for the Indica V2 Xeta. Customers submitted their own versions of an Indica Xeta advertisement on the website by shooting a video of the advertisement or presenting a storyboard with original pictures.
But why the younger generation? After a very successful run of the Indica V2 Xeta commercial and its being awarded the best Auto Commercial of the year 2006 by CNBC, Tata Motors decided to generate more interest in the brand from the younger quarters. Instead of making them watch the same commercial over and over again, the audience was invited to submit their own renditions.
Launching an online contest for the peppy new car model makes Tata Motors the first Indian auto company to experiment through Web 2.0. Another feature was that contestants could share their entries with their friends while increasing promotions.
With an online voting option and a slogan contest available to increase the interactivity on the site, the entire contest was a success creating a sizeable buzz about the car. The facts—2.5 million impressions, 25000 clicks and 7000 registrations!
The promotion for this contest was well planned with important websites like Youtube, Rediff, Zapak, Contests2win and others taking part in the promotions.
The main idea behind this unique contest was to look beyond traditional media and manage to connect with a younger, dynamic generation; definitely, this younger target profile is hip, contemporary and looks ahead of the times!
And having web support allows an opportunity to generate a two way interaction with this audience. In fact, Satish Ramachandran, the Vice President of Draftfcb Ulka whose firm created the advertisement said that the contest demonstrated the power of the web 2.0 while adding that ”…it was a major turning point in the way brands will interact with target audiences and build relationships”.