Small wonder

Little Nano made a big splash last year. Not surprisingly, it tops the Brand Derby ranking as the most successful launch

Sooner than later, even purists will begin to use a new word for something that is cheap and meant for mass consumption but not short on quality: Nano. Within no time after Ratan Tata kept his word and showed to the world his Rs 1-lakh car in January 2008, Nano has already become a business jargon. Two-wheeler companies want to do Nano bikes (the power of a motorcycle at the price of a moped) and real estate developers want to do Nano houses, cheap yet dignified, for the masses. Frugal engineering found its manhood with the Nano.

The global automobile industry, witness to the fall from grace of the US giants, couldn’t believe that a car like this could come into existence. But it did, causing a tectonic shift in the automotive world forever. The sensation that the Nano created across the world was unprecedented. That was because nobody believed Tata could pull it off, and the very fact that he did — that too, with a product that exceeded all expectations — had worldwide repercussions.

The main thing that worked in the Nano’s favour was that rivals were smug in the thought it would be a non-car; after all, what would a dirt-cheap car built by Tata Motors, best known for its cheap and utilitarian workhorses, be like anyway? Would it be safe? Will it be anything more than a glorified auto-rickshaw?

But what was revealed at the Auto Expo in New Delhi in that cold but bright winter morning was a complete automobile with the ability to carry four people in comfort and a cheerful and pleasant countenance to go with it. Like all historical great cars such as the Volkswagen Beetle, Fiat 500 and 600, Citroen 2CV and Mini, the Nano was a marvel of automotive packaging that won over all the cynics.

Then, when Tata assured that the Nano will meet all relevant international safety and emission standards, existing as well as forthcoming, jaws collectively dropped several notches further. It was a classic case of under-promising and over-achieving.

An unconventional, much-hyped product barely needs any conventional advertising. This is why the Nano advertising never bothered persuading two-wheeler owners to come on board. Traditional automotive advertising and communication usually call for highlighting the features and product benefits. But in the case of the Nano, it was deemed unnecessary. By using clever tools to highlight the word Nano in the media, the hype surrounding the market launch of the car in March this year was drummed up even further.

Besides the huge press advertisements taken up by Tata Motors for the Nano, a further boost to the campaign came from the banks that were processing the booking amounts. Their attempt to wrest the Nano applications their way also helped propagate the fact that you had to be lucky to become a Nano owner. The Internet served its part by making the Nano the first car in India which you could book online. Then, of course, there was word-of-mouth — it was the most talked-about car, not just in India but the world.

All this helped produce a brand name that has not just become very famous, but as expected, generic too. It took years for Band-Aid and Xerox to become generic, but with the Nano, all it took was a few months.

But when you go back a bit, you realise that irrespective of what the brand would be called, the idea behind it was huge — an automobile that would offer protection from the elements and offer safety to an Indian family that otherwise would use a two-wheeler on our dangerous roads. And to sway the two-wheeler user, the car had to be mighty cheap to acquire and run. That’s it. The ‘Rs 1-lakh’ tag that got affixed very early in the Nano’s life only served to describe the car that much more perfectly. It was this tag that pre-sold the Nano by firing everybody’s imagination; suddenly, everybody who thought otherwise, could aspire to buy and drive a proper car. It is this hope that is encapsulated in the Nano. It has gone down in history books as the car and the brand that is a repository of millions of aspirations.