Serendipity often has a role to play in advertising. The new Isuzu campaign ‘Be the Game Changer’ launched last week to push its lifestyle pick-up, the D-Max V-Cross, was born out of one such serendipitous moment.

The Japanese automaker, known globally for its pick-ups, had launched the V-Cross in India in 2016. At that time, in a country largely dominated by SUVs, a pick-up vehicle in the passenger segment was still a rare entity, the Mahindra Scorpio Getaway and Tata Xenon being the only others. The challenge then was to establish the category and change the perception.

As S Narasimhan, Sr Vice President, RK Swamy Hansa, Isuzu’s ad agency, explains, “When Isuzu launched the V-Cross in 2016, the basic issue confronting it was that the pick-up was perceived as a commercial vehicle.” It had a delivery connotation.

Isuzu’s challenge was to make it attractive as a lifestyle vehicle for families. At the time of its launch, it positioned it as an Adventure Utility Vehicle and the communication was centred on establishing it as an ideal family weekend getaway car. In a way the timing was right. The customer was changing — Indians were becoming outdoorsy, families were doing road trips together, and a new breed of hard-working entrepreneurs were using the pick-up as a workhorse vehicle for their start-ups. Over the next year-and-a-half, Isuzu focussed on customer stories and pushed these on digital media. “We did a lot of work with customers finding out why they bought the V-Cross. We found that the community that was buying it was largely entrepreneurial, not at all status symbol-conscious. They were not necessarily looking for thrills but were thrilling people,” says Narasimhan.

Among others, there was a lady who was a test pilot for Bombardier and a serious offroader, a businessman farmer from Coimbatore, a restaurateur from Mumbai and a banker. All of 2017, Isuzu spent putting together videos on a day in the life of these V-Cross owners on digital media. The stories of the iV leaguers, as it termed them, became a hit, crossing over one crore views.

It was now time to up the game. There were constant conversations between the client and the agency. During one such chat, an IPL match was playing on TV in the background and the talk shifted to cricket. “The spectacular fielding of Jonty Rhodes and how it changed cricket came up in that conversation,” says Narasimhan.

A few days later, the marketing head of Isuzu called us, recalls Narasimhan, probing whether any parallels could be made between the way fielding was becoming important in a game dominated by bat and ball, and Isuzu’s own situation in India. Thus was born the ‘Be the Game Changer’ campaign. Why not be like the fielder who changed the game of cricket. Why not position the pick-up as a game changer?

When they researched, they found that Jonty Rhodes actually drove pick-ups in South Africa, he and his wife surfed a lot, and had an active outdoor lifestyle. Thus the association was sewn. “I was literally born in a pick-up,” says Rhodes, describing how the vehicle was totally part of his personality.

The ad shows Rhodes and his family driving from Coorg to Kovalam, a surf board in the back of the vehicle. There are shots of the family having fun on the beach, sightseeing, interspersed with the cricketer’s gravity-defying dives on the cricket field.

Though the agency had a body double arranged, Rhodes would not hear of it. “After all, what would the body double have to do — skipping, bicycling, diving on the field, surfing? Those are things I do. It did not make sense,” he said.

Rhodes’ dives on the field were so magical that an artist has actually captured the arc-like pose as a logo in the Be The game changer ad. “It’s not very straight,” jokes the legendary fielder.

As a concept and a story, the game changer idea is perfect. Now it remains to be seen whether it actually delivers the goods for Isuzu, for whom V-Cross is the flagship vehicle in India, accounting for almost 30 per cent of its sales.

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