Hyundai revs up on style to reposition the brand

The Korean auto major looks to upgrade the brand's status and experience

When Hyundai Motor first drove into India, the company’s focus was primarily on brand penetration but today, over two decades later, the company is repositioning the brand within what it calls the ‘modern-premium’ framework. The company defines this as a space that lets consumers into an upgraded experience without altering the price-value equation, thereby hoping to attract new customers without alienating its old clientele. To that end a new digital campaign with popular stand-up comic artists has been launched and the company, over the past year, has been overhauling its product offerings, sales and service platforms.

“Hyundai’s brand direction ‘modern premium’ does not just mean luxury cars. It is about providing new values and experiences to customers who are constantly looking for more,” says Puneet Anand, senior general manager and group head (marketing) at Hyundai Motors. Increasingly customers are looking to get more from their old brands and are also looking at brand behaviour more closely, according to a bunch of surveys from market research agencies such as Nielsen and Euromonitor. This has encouraged many companies to adopt a persona or a cause that makes the label more appealing to the new-age customer. In a way, Hyundai’s focus on experience and premium service and value are in keeping with this global trend.

How does the company plan to drive home the new positioning? “We will do so through ways that are unique to the brand and which go beyond customer expectations while maintaining the price-value equation,” says Anand. The company has also stepped up its communication and branding efforts. Marketing and promotion budgets have doubled in the last two years and the company says it is focusing hugely on digital platforms. 

When the company first came to India, the focus was on brand penetration. It was important to push recognition and recall in a country where Hyundai was a relatively unknown label. The company soon realised that the best way to do this would be to ride the Bollywood wagon and it signed on Shahrukh Khan (whose 18-year long association with the company is among the longest brand engagements in the sector) for the Santro, a model which has since been discontinued. 

It is time to move to the next phase in terms of the brand-customer engagement, the company believes. The modern premium tag has been tried out globally and so far, the company believes, it is working. Its brand value in 2016 ($ 12,547 million according to Best Global Brands, Interbrand) went up by 11 per cent over 2015. And both Hyundai and Kia (its associate company) have been on the list of fastest growing brands for two years.  

The move to reposition the Hyundai brand comes as Kia Motors is set to launch its facility in India in a few months and also when the country’s largest car maker Maruti Suzuki has launched a slew of premium products through the Nexa platform. Hyundai however sees the repositioning as a natural progression rather than a reaction to rivals. “Our technology is cutting edge and we have a world class platform, the Hyundai Fluidic Sculpture, which is far more premium. This has helped us differentiate our brand from mass market brands on style and experience,” says Rakesh Srivastava, senior VP-sales and marketing at Hyundai Motors.

The journey began last year with the launch of SUV Tucson and Sedan Elantra. The two launches came on the heels of the  SUV Creta, which has been successful with its high-end model. The aim says Anand is to provide an enhanced brand experience right from Eon to Santa Fe. “We believe Hyundai customers seek modern premium. We don’t differentiate between our customers,” he added. The company says customers are already paying a premium for the Hyundai label. In the last three years the Hyundai car’s average ticket size has increased to Rs 7 lakh from around Rs  4.5 lakh according to Anand. “Customers are ready to pay a 15 per cent premium for (Hyundai) over a similar segment product,” says Anand.  

The company sees a large customer base among the young, not just in urban areas but also in small towns. The digital campaign around the recently launched Grand i10 tagged ‘Comebackpedia’ is aimed at this audience. The campaign uses well known comic actors to relay pithy comeback lines and has linked this with an interactive promotion cum contest where users are asked generate witty memes around the theme. The video on Youtube has garnered over 6.7 million views and resulted in around 10,400 memes so far.

The company has also launched a Hyundai Premium Assurance Programme (HPAP), extending the brand’s premium promise on to the service platform.