Brand Curry clinches Hero's moped business

Subrato Chakraborty and Ratnodeep Rudra's Brand Curry has just won the prestigious moped business of the Hero group. In a two-way pitch, Brand Curry was pitted against Percept.

Mahesh Munjal's moped manufacturing company, Majestic Auto Limited has two moped brands - Hero Panther and Hero Effy. Subrato Chakraborty told agencyfaqs! that the Hero group is set to relaunch all the products as there is a huge potential of moped sales in rural and semi-urban India.

The account size is currently Rs 6 crore, which may witness a further increase subsequently.

Hero group's bullishness on the moped business stems from the fact that as of date, only 4.5 per cent of rural and 5 per cent of semi-urban households have mopeds. Last fiscal, 700,000 units of mopeds were sold across India.

According to estimates, TVS is the market leader with a 45 per cent market share, followed by Hero (30%). The balance market is shared between Kinetic and the rest, industry sources said.

Brand Curry's Chakraborty said the challenge for the agency was to understand the rural mindset. "Rural advertising is often an urban paradigm, where city-based advertising agencies claim to understand the rural psyche while sitting in air-conditioned comfort".

"We, at Brand Curry, of course revel at doing things differently. To understand rural India better, we shifted our entire office to a remote haryana village...a village called Uchana, for one week. That experience helped us in thoroughly understanding our future consumers...," Chakraborty added.

The agency will run a 360 degree campaign - involving mass media as well as below-the-line (BTL) activities. "BTL will play a very significant role in essaying the pride of ownership of a Hero moped," he explained. For mass media, there are plans for TVCs, and also billboard and newspaper advertisements. "It's too early to decide whether we will using celebrity endorsements...," Chakraborty added. The campaigns will break in October-end and will reflect the aspiring rural mindset.

"Motorbikes are not so entrenched in rural India, unlike the trend in metros and mini-metros. Moped, thus, offers a goldmine of opportunity for a company like Majestic Motors. By paying as little as Rs 10,000-15,000, the rural consumer also gets to ride on his dream two-wheeler," he said.

With scooters not being the ideal vehicle on village roads, motorbikes, of course, offer a faster and trendier option. But the cost of even the cheapest bike at about Rs 25,000 or thereabouts could be a problem for the average village Joe. The Hero group will be precisely targeting this section of consumers when it launches a slew of marketing initiatives in a couple of weeks.

With the Majestic Auto account, Brand Curry has bagged three accounts with a combined size of Rs 16 crore. That's not too bad, considering the agency has been around for only three months.

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