Tata Nano?—?Beyond the obvious : Why did people not want the people’s car?

** This article first appeared on my marketing blog - Hook, Line & Clincher**

The Wikipedia page of Tata Nano reads “2008–2018”. The company recently announced that in August 2018 only 1 unit of Tata Nano was produced and in it’s current form the Nano will not go beyond 2019. This was the final official nail in the coffin after making several attempts to revive the “People’s Car”

Tata Nano which was Ratan Tata’s dream project had all the ingredients to be a revolutionary product and brand. It had a vision to lift up families of 4, travelling on a two wheeler straight to the comfort of a car. It had the price tag that had all other auto companies scratching their heads and the hype worthy of creating massive demand that made waves not just in India but across the world.

But like Icarus, Nano flew too close to the sun, too early and what was being touted as it’s biggest selling point became the reason for it’s early demise.

This article is not to criticize where the Nano team faltered. It is easy to do that in hindsight when you know the outcome. It is more to highlight the fact that the team tried to make a truly revolutionary homegrown innovation but things just did not go their way.

Let’s have a closer look at the decade that went by for the People’s car and why after several attempts it was impossible to make “People” buy it.

A launchpad that sprung out of control

Tata Nano was launched in 2008 amidst much fan fare. Mr. Tata showed a vision and made several promises. With Nano, he vowed to solve the middle class problem of commuting on a scooter and not being able to afford a car. He silenced his critics who doubted his vision all along and also made a direct comparison with Maruti 800.

However, it became a classic case of over promise and under-delivery and the dream launch for the brand became it’s undoing and soon became a nightmare. To be fair to the marketing team, in no communication that I could come across did the team try to position it as the “cheapest car” but the media world-over did it for them. Nano with it’s unique design won several awards.

It came with three strong promises as per Ratan Tata’s launch speech at the Auto Expo 2008

• Affordable and Low Cost
• Built to meet all safety standards
• High in Fuel Efficiency, Low in Pollution

Tata Motors soon realized that living up to the Rs. 100,000 car promise was a loss making model which did not go down well with buyers who were now, after all the hype, were finding it difficult to place it beyond that price tag.

The news and incidents of the Nano catching fire, sometimes soon after it was taken out of the showroom questioned the much touted adherence to it’s safety norms.

Imagine booking the car that you have waited for long and finally get to see it only after 18 months. That is exactly what happened when the production of the first 100,000 Tata Nanos was delayed by 18 months because they had to shift the production plant from West Bengal to Gujarat.

Nano, in it’s early days, became

• A cheap car, which wasn’t cheap
• A safe car which caught fire unexpectedly
• A poor people’s car that poor people aren’t buying

It was this mega launch that sprung out of control and gave little opportunities for the team to bounce back after hitting firmly on the ground.

Ahead of it’s time?

Was Nano futuristic ? Would Nano’s fate be different if it would have launched in 2018 rather than 2008 ? Should it have waited out the period where car was not a mere machine to take from point A to point B but symbolized something bigger?

Let’s rewind 10 years and see what owning a car meant to “The Great Indian Middle Class”

A person buys a car for what he/she wants to be and not what he/she is — Anonymous

In 2000s, owning a car was a symbol of upward mobility. It was something that people didn’t need but bought it either under societal pressure or because it gave a sense of achieving a higher standard of living. It was a symbol of moving up the ladder.

The movie Do Dooni Chaar, released in 2010, perfectly portrays how the Middle Class romanticized owning a car. So much so that it becomes a dream, a chance for the chief wage earner to be a hero, a place in the society and the realization that your standard of living has moved a notch above.

The Nano, at best, made people move sideways when they wanted to move upward.

Today, in the age of Ola and Uber, easier financing options, higher disposable income, earning members in the age group of 24–35 and a time where a car is no longer looked on as a “status symbol”, Nano with it’s unique city friendly design, fuel efficiency and the power to serve the basic purpose of commuting from point A to point B in the cheapest and easiest way possible, would and could have been a bigger success. But this wasn’t the case in 2008.

People wanted something more than Maruti 800 but Nano wasn’t that

n the Tata Nano launch event, Mr. Ratan Tata pitched Nano directly against Maruti 800 saying it was 8% shorter bumper to bumper but 21% more spacious internally than 800. But the fact is that people did not want a “substitute” to an already dying 800, they wanted something more.

2000s was also the age which had witnessed the rise and sun setting of the classic Maruti 800. Before Maruti 800 the middle class’s only ambition was to own a scooter. The 800 ruled the roads from 1983 till early 2000s which is when people started becoming more aspirational.

800 had already done the job of moving people from scooter to dreaming of car. Was there a space for a Nano that was just a cheaper 800 when people were already dreaming of owning large cars?

As Nano’s initial perception and selling point of being the cheapest car boomeranged, the then Middle Class despite being value conscious did not take pride in owning the “cheapest car”.

According to this HBR article, most of the users who were buying the Nano were firstly not buying the basic version. They were buying the high-end model with power windows and air condition. More than that, it was also being bought by people as a second back-up car for people who wanted to show off. Nano had barely impacted the market it had set out to disrupt.

Which is when Nano questioned the three basic things that need to be answered before a new launch

• is it wanted,
• who wants it and
• under what circumstances will people use it?

but a brand that was already under ICU was it too late in the day for revival. Let’s have a look at the attempts to bring it back to life through the several positioning and re positioning.

Also Read : Why Saregama’s Carvaan became a success in the age of Gaana and Saavn?

A view into Nano’s desperate cry for help through its ads

The brand regularly shifted its positioning and the target audience for the car. While it started with the ‘Khushiyon Ki Chaabi’ ad campaign in 2010 which went from as a car for the poor villagers of India, to being the envy of those riding bikes, to focusing on young couples in metros and semi-metros and the opening up of new possibilities, to even targeting older couples with kids and the possibilities of rekindling their love for each other — Adage India

Source

2010 — Khushiyon ki Chaabi — Version — Smaller Towns

Launch spoke to the families of smaller towns and cities immediately alienating the ones in the cities.

2011 — Khushiyon ki Chaabi — Version — City Couples

These series of ads had a consistent theme. It spoke loudly to new couples and urban families. It always showed the protagonists having a upgraded, more comfortable commute in the Nano while they reminisce about the days gone by when they were on two wheels. These ads look like a straight outcome of Mr. Ratan Tata’s single line brief

An affordable, all weather, family car

2012 — Khushiyon ki Chaabi — Version — Youth

Tata realized that families were not considering Nano as an upgrade but more as a compromise over the scooter that they currently own.

Which is when they changed their target audience to urban youth and college students trying to stand out from the crowd. Instead of showing Nano as an upgrade over scooter for the first time, since its launch, the mainline communication actually spoke about product benefits like space, mileage and, comfort.

Khushiyon ki chaabi continued…

2013–2015 —Version — Celebrate Awesomeness

Nano wasn’t designed to appeal to the youth. The mission and vision was not there in the product while the target audience changed from 2 wheeler small town families to the city youth. The below ad launched Nano in newer vibrant colors and the ad execution did not talk about product benefits, did not talk about disadvantages of the two wheeler, it just wanted the person owning the Nano to celebrate awesomeness.

A new feature and a new name : The All New Nano Twist

This time Nano was launched under the same campaign but with power steering. It ceased to be what it started out to be but now more desperate than ever to establish itself with the city youth as a city car. This was required because the consumer landscape in India had witnessed a rapid change since its launch and Nano had to adapt.

In these years, Nano also sponsored certain youth events like Youth Nexus, NH7 Weekender. They had their own branded content TV show called Nano Drive on MTV.

2016 — Auto Transmssion for GenX

This is the last known product variant and communication piece for Nano before it slowly slipped into oblivion. What started out as a no-frills car was now calling out the GenX by literally naming it’s newest variant as GenX.

Auto Transmission in city traffic was not a bad idea at all especially in a time when hatchbacks missed this feature but for some reason even this attempt was futile as the sales refused to lift up.

What do we know? What have we learnt?

In fact, I can think of only one example of a CEO who pre-announced an innovation that was going to change the world and actually delivered it. That’s Steve Jobs of course.  Source

In a parallel universe, Tata Nano would have been everything what it set out to be if it weren’t for the hype surrounding it and the obstacles soon after. It could have been, in its current form, a great success where a car is slowly ceasing to be an emotional purchase in 2020’s India.

I still feel there is merit to a relaunch of Tata Nano in a low-cost electric vehicle version to solve the commuting woes in burgeoning city traffic an sky rocketing fuel prices. But the question remains if it is about time that Tata gives up the name “Nano” and let it rest in peace to dissociate all the baggage that comes with it.

** This article first appeared on my marketing blog - Hook, Line & Clincher**